The Last 20 Years of Empirical Research on Government Utilization of Academic Social Science Research: A State-of-the-Art Literature Review

Abstract

We organize and critique the last 20 years of empirical research on policy utilization of academic social science, offering eight recommendations for future research: (1) improvement in utilization measures; (2) greater alignment on constructs of interest; (3) greater address of different national contexts; 4) study of mechanisms connecting academic research to policymakers; (5) incorporation of knowledge on information search; (6) attention to differences between utilization of policy, social, and physical science in different sectors; (7) evaluative inquiry on the effects of research utilization; and (8) investigation of the value of research in addressing different classes of societal problems.