The Extent and Determinants of the Utilization of University Research in Government Agencies

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6210.00279
• Author: Nabil Amara,Moktar Lamari,Réjean Landry
• Published date: 01 March 2003
• Date: 01 March 2003

192 Public Administration Review •March/April 2003, Vol. 63, No. 2

Réjean Landry

Moktar Lamari

Nabil Amara

Université Laval

The Extent and Determinants of the Utilization of

University Research in Government Agencies

This article addresses three questions: To what extent is university research used in government

agencies? Are there differences between the policy domains in regard to the extent of use? What

determines the use of university research in government agencies? The data analysis is based on

a survey of 833 government officials from Canadian government agencies. Comparisons of the

magnitude of uptake of university research show large and significant differences across policy

domains. The results of the multivariate regression analyses show that the characteristics of re-

search and the focus on the advancement of scholarly knowledge or on users’ needs do not

explain the uptake of research. Users’ adaptation of research, users’ acquisition efforts, links

between researchers and users, and users’ organizational contexts are good predictors of the

uptake of research by government officials.

This article addresses three questions: To what extent is

university research used in government agencies? Are there

differences across policy domains in regard to the extent

of use? What determines the use of university research in

government agencies? The use of research evidence in

government agencies is based on the idea that informing

decisions with research findings is likely to help eliminate

inefficient uses of resources or wrong decisions. Although

there is an expanding body of conceptual and empirical

studies on the use of research in government agencies, these

studies tend to suffer from four methodological problems

that Mandell and Sauter (1984) identified 19 years ago:

composition of the study population; specification of the

dependent variable “use”; problems associated with the

independent variables considered; and problems resulting

from the failure to appreciate respondents’ inability to re-

port and explain their behavior accurately. Some of these

methodological problems exist because, despite several

attempts to develop conceptual models for explaining the

use of research (Sabatier 1978; Beyer and Trice 1982;

Bozeman 1986; Huberman 1987; Webber 1987; Lester and

Wilds 1990; Lester 1993; Oh and Rich 1996; Oh 2000;

Landry, Amara, and Lamari 2001), there is not yet an inte-

grated conceptual model used by the experts in the field of

knowledge utilization.

This article first reviews the major methodological

problems of the field of knowledge utilization to indicate

how the present study deals with them. Then it applies

conceptual models and methodological solutions likely

to alleviate those problems to data about how profession-

als and managers in Canadian and provincial government

agencies use university research in their professional ac-

tivities. The article concludes by stressing the major find-

ings of the study and their policy implications, as well as

by pointing to issues that should receive attention in fu-

ture investigations.

We know little about the factors that induce profession-

als and managers in government agencies to use univer-

sity research in their professional activities. The purpose

and contribution of this article is to identify the determi-

Réjean Landry is a professor of management at Laval University in Quebec

City. He holds a chair on the dissemination and uptake of research. Web

site: http://www.fss.ulaval.ca/kuuc. Email: rejean.landry@mng.ulaval.ca.

Moktar Lamari has completed a doctorate in political science at Laval Uni-

versity. He is currently a senior policy evaluator at the Ministry of Research,

Science and Technology in the Quebec government. Web site: http://www.fss.

ulaval.ca/kuuc. Email: Moktar.Lamari@mrst.gouv.qc.ca.

Nabil Amara has completed a doctorate in political science at Laval Univer-

sity. He is currently a researcher and the Canadian Health Services Research

Foundation chair on dissemination and uptake of research at Laval Univer-

sity in Quebec City. Web site: http://www.fss.ulaval.ca/kuuc. Email: nabil.

amara@mng.ulaval.ca.