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，这些机构包括教育部、住房和城市发展部、司法部、劳工部以及卫生和公共服务部内的一些公共服务机构。这项研究对司法和公共服务机构进行了研究。由社会政策机构赞助的研究构成了一笔可观的金额，它包括广泛的学科和联邦政府资金中社会科学研究的很大份额。研究这项研究将扩大公共研发管理的学术范围，使之超越NIH和NSF等传统机构，促进包括功绩审查和技术转让在内的技术比较研究。此外，这项研究可能会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受赞助研究和社会结果之间的关系。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，以及与使命相关的研究项目和这些结果之间假设的因果联系。这项研究首先仔细审查了研究目的和目的的公开表述，然后分析了它们与可识别的社会结果之间的程序和逻辑联系。阐明目标和目的的来源包括授权立法、使命声明和战略计划。社会成果包括可用的、系统的社会指标，以及政策制定者和利益相关者在阐明引发研究计划必要性的社会问题时使用的特别指标。尽管各机构对《政府绩效和结果法》(GPRA)的回应将是一项重要的资源，但研究人员不会侧重于评估该法案本身对各机构或其研究的影响。相反，他们将集中询问社会政策机构如何在当前项目和投资研究之间设定优先事项，他们如何管理针对社会成果的研究，他们如何将新知识和/或技术从他们赞助的研究转移到他们的使命追求中，他们如何预测他们的研究和社会成果之间的联系，以及这些结果可能是什么。因此，这项研究将通过文献审查和对机构工作人员和赠款接受者以及目标和用户社区成员的精英半结构化访谈相结合的方式取得进展。许多被研究的机构对少数群体和弱势群体的影响不成比例，研究方法包括目标社区、用户社区和客户社区作为响应者。由这项提案资助的研究将继续以前由NSF资助的试点水平的研究。它将完成对卫生和公众服务部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。该团队将培训两名研究生，除了在学术期刊上发表论文外，研究成果还将补充首席研究员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.