NCJ Number
80051
Journal
Justitiele verkenningen Issue: 6 Dated: (1979) Pages: 30-50
Date Published
1979
Length
21 pages
Annotation
Factors limiting the applications of applied social science research are outlined.
Abstract
In general, the social sciences have failed to develop a social technology for treatment of problems to parallel the evolution of diagnostic research. This failure is attributed to such factors as the social distance between policymakers and researchers, resulting from a practical versus a theoretical-ideological orientation. Furthermore, studies undertaken to deal with urgent problems tend to be so superficial that they do not get to the heart of the problem or so thorough that they are not completed until the problem is long past. Too many studies are not critical enough of the problem definition supplied by the person commissioning the study. Finally, study instruments and methods are frequently not adequate because researchers are not familiar with policy issues from the inside out. Because of the growing number of policy studies, the role of research administrators has become prominent. In the view of the government, improved research organization should provide guarantees that the research is useful for the government and the society. The government, researchers, and study users should be brought closer together to provide for continuity of both research and policy. Many small specialized research institutes exist in the Netherlands to deal with particular problems. The groups may, like the American public interest groups, be geared to the needs of the users, but thus far they have neither made particular scientific contributions or bridged the gap between research and policy. For that reason, the government now tends to contract research with institutes which have a great social distance from policy. The usefulness of applied research for government policy depends on continuous research which runs parallel to the policy interests of the government and which has predictive potential for policy. The segmentalization of policy and research efforts must be overcome with coordinated research programs, and more attention must be paid to the interaction among research areas, both by special interest research institutes and by government research institutes.