The Public Value of Social Policy Research

该项目调查了由美国联邦政府的社会政策机构资助的研究的公共价值或社会结果，如教育部、住房和城市发展部、司法部、劳工部以及卫生和人类服务部的一些人类服务机构。这项研究的对象是司法和人类服务机构。由社会政策机构资助的研究构成了一个巨大的数额，它包括广泛的学科和联邦政府资助的社会科学研究的很大一部分。研究本研究将拓宽公共研发管理的学术视野，超越NIH和NSF等传统机构，促进包括绩效评估和技术转移在内的技术比较研究。此外，该研究可能阐明从研究中产生公共价值的机制，从而有助于更广泛地理解赞助研究与社会成果之间的关系。考察社会政策研究的“公共价值”意味着研究研究的社会结果，以及与任务相关的研究项目与这些结果之间假设的因果关系。该研究首先仔细审查公众对研究目标和目的的表述，然后继续分析它们与可识别的社会结果之间的程序和逻辑联系。明确目标和目的的来源包括授权立法、使命声明和战略计划。社会结果包括可用的、系统的社会指标，以及决策者和利益相关者在阐明引发研究项目需求的社会问题时使用的特别指标。尽管各机构对《政府绩效与结果法》（GPRA）的回应将是一个重要的资源，但研究人员不会把重点放在评估该法案本身对各机构或其研究的影响上。相反，他们将专注于询问社会政策机构如何在当前项目和研究投资之间设定优先级，他们如何管理研究以获得社会成果，他们如何将新知识和/或技术从他们赞助的研究中转移到追求他们的使命中，他们如何预测他们的研究与社会成果之间的联系，以及这些结果可能是什么。因此，这项研究将结合文献审查和对机构人员和赠款接受者以及对目标群体和用户群体成员的精英、半结构化访谈来进行。所研究的许多机构对少数民族和弱势群体的影响不成比例，研究方法包括目标、用户和客户社区作为调查对象。由该提案资助的研究将继续以前由国家科学基金会在试点水平上资助的研究。它将完成对卫生与公众服务部下属人类服务机构赞助的研究的调查，并开始并希望完成对司法部国家司法研究所的调查。该团队将培养两名研究生，除了在学术期刊上发表研究成果外，研究成果还将补充首席研究员所在机构公共政策项目的几门研究生课程的教学。

This project investigates the public value or societal outcomes of the research funded by social policy agencies of the US federal government such as the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, and some human services agencies within Health and Human Services. This research studies agencies in Justice and Human Services. The research sponsored by social policy agencies constitutes a significant sum, and it includes a wide array of disciplines and a great share of the social science research the federal government funds. Studying this research will broaden the scholarship of public R&D management beyond such traditional agencies as NIH and NSF, facilitating the comparative study of techniques including merit review and technology transfer. Moreover, the study may illuminate mechanisms for producing public value from research and thus contribute to understanding the relationship between sponsored research and societal outcomes more broadly. Examining the "public value" of social policy research means studying the societal outcomes of the research and the hypothesized causal links between mission-related research programs and these outcomes. The study begins by scrutinizing public articulations of the goals and objectives for the research and continues by analyzing the procedural and logical connections between them and identifiable societal outcomes. Sources for the articulation of goals and objectives include authorizing legislation, mission statements, and strategic plans. Societal outcomes include available, systematic social indicators, as well as ad hoc indicators that policy makers and stakeholders have used in articulating the societal problem triggering the need for the research program. Although the agencies' responses to the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) will be an important resource, the researchers will not focus on evaluating that Act's impact, per se, on the agencies or their research. Rather, they will concentrate on asking how social policy agencies set priorities between current programs and investing in research, how they manage research for societal outcomes, how they transfer new knowledge and/or technologies from their sponsored research into the pursuit of their missions, how they anticipate the linkages between their research and societal outcomes, and what those outcomes may be. The research will thus progress by a combination of documentary review and elite, semi-structured interviews of agency personnel and grant recipients, as well as of members of target and user communities. Many of the agencies studied have a disproportionate impact on minority and disadvantaged groups, and the method of study includes target, user, and client communities as respondents.The research funded by this proposal will continue research previously funded by NSF at the pilot level. It will complete the inquiry into research sponsored by the human services agencies of HHS and begin and, it is hoped, complete the inquiry into the National Institute of Justice at the Department of Justice. The team will train two graduate students and, besides publication in scholarly journals, research findings will supplement teaching in several graduate courses in the public policy program at the Principal Investigator's institution.