Barriers to the Influence of Research

Abstract

This paper for the Seventh International Forum on Research in School Librarianship describes a small-scale pilot study that is part of a much larger longitudinal study of “Research and Researchers in School Librarianship”. The pilot study is a preliminary attempt to address issues associated with determining the quality of the published research in the field of school librarianship. The main aims are first, to test the extent to which experienced evaluators agreed in their rankings of research articles on the basis of quality; and secondly, to investigate the ways in which experienced evaluators evaluate research articles. A qualitative, naturalistic research design is used. The data collection was still proceeding at the time the paper was being written; the conference presentation will therefore provide further information about the results of the data analysis and draw some conclusions from the analysis. However, it is already clear from the literature review that the relationship between research quality and the adoption of the results of that research in decision making is more complex than we have supposed.