Awareness and use of social science research among executive and administrative staff members of state correctional agencies

Officials and staff members of public agencies must become aware of social science research information if they are to make use of it in their work. Contemporary research has largely ignored the issue of awareness, however, concentrating instead on later stages of the research utilization process. In this study of executive officials and administrative staff members of state correctional agencies, respondents consider awareness of social science research to be important, but most believe that they make less use of it than they should. Persons working in both research and nonresearch areas perceive the utility of social science research as relatively low, and turn to nonscholarly sources of information before using scholarly sources. Researchers, however, tend to view social science as basic knowledge, whereas many nonresearchers view social science simply as one of several types of knowledge that may be applied to clearly defined problems. Research results must be disseminated more widely to the sources of information that correctional agency personnel encounter routinely, despite traditional academic publishing norms.