Chapter III: Knowledge Utilization And The Department Of Education (DOE)
Rehabilitation services, research, and training are administered at
the federal level through the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative
Services (OSERS) under the Department of Education (DOE). To best understand
research utilization in the rehabilitation field and its relationship to
people with disabilities, it is useful to identify utilization practices in
the larger entity, the Department of Education. That department has been
involved in research dissemination and utilization efforts since the late
fifties even before it separated from the combined Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare. This chapter discusses dissemination and utilization
historically for general education, special education, and then
rehabilitation.
I. HISTORY OF GENERAL EDUCATION DISSEMINATION & USE
A. The Framework: Research and Development
Larry Hutchins (1989) reviewed the federal education dissemination
activities from 1958 to 1983 and much of what follows comes from his article.
That history began with the federal government's educational program
administered by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and ended
with it administered by the Department of Education. It began with the
Cooperative Research Act of 1954 which was designed to foster "'extramural
research' outside the Office of Education" (Hutchins, 1989:11). It ended with
a wide range of dissemination and utilization programs sponsored by the Office
of Educational Research and Improvement within the Department of Education.
The many organizational changes within each department as well as
between departments influenced the character of present dissemination and
utilization programs. In fact, at one time two independent related units--the
Office of Education and the National Institute of Education--within the same
department offered similar programs. They did so with differing philosophies
and approaches as illustrated in the following descriptions of dissemination
strategies.
B. Dissemination strategies
ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Center, began in 1963
(under the Office of Education within the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare) as an archives for "unpublished, 'fugitive' documents generated by
the rapidly expanding federal research effort" (Hutchins, 1989:11).
Eventually it became a large, international, and widely used document
information system. Generally, it is dependent on researchers and innovaters
submitting documentation to stay up-to-date and comprehensive. Horn and
Clements (1989) provide a detailed 20-year history of ERIC and its future.
The State Dissemination Capacity Building Program began in the late
sixties by the Office of Education to "improve state education agencies'
ability to serve practitioners through resources, linkage, and leadership"
(Hutchins, 1989:13). The state education agencies were to be an extension
agent system somewhat as operated under the land-grant university and the
agricultural model of dissemination. State agencies did not have to follow
any federal (top-down) model nor were they required to provide extension
agents. The designers of the program believed that the primary responsibility
for education lay with the states and not with the federal government.
Hutchins believes the program did not achieve its long-range objectives "in
part through a lack of funds and because of the failure of the state
legislatures and state boards of education to buy into the design with their
own resources" (Ibid). Also, as Hutchins later explains, it did not succeed
because of the movement to the National Institute of Education (NIE) with its
differing philosophy, staff, and management.
Parallel yet different dissemination emphases occurred under the
Office of Education (OE) and the National Institute of Education (NIE). When
NIE was created, ERIC and State Dissemination Capacity Building Programs were
transferred from OE to NIE as part of the transfer of general dissemination
authority. Eventually the Office of Education sponsored PIP (Product
Information Packages) and NDN (National Diffusion Network) to disseminate its
own programs while NIE sponsored, among other programs, EPIE (Educational
Products Information Exchange) and RDx (Research and Development Exchange).
"EPIE...best described as a consumers' union in education, still exists and
provides such things as comparative evaluation of audiovisual hardware,
comparisons of the scope and sequence of major commercial curriculum products,
information about the alignment of tests and text, and information about
computer software" (Ibid, 17).
Research and Development Exchange (RDx) promoted collaborative
dissemination efforts among Regional Educational Laboratories and research
centers. "When labs were originally founded, the image of their core function
was an engineering one. Basic research would be transformed, through
curriculum, so that students would be taught in the best way known. Lab
dissemination was geared to the adoption and implementation of research-based
curricula" (Bagenstos, 1989:31). While RDx no longer exists to promote
collaboration, the laboratories and centers continue to cooperate and to
disseminate information about their products.
Several studies appeared between 1977 and 1983 emphasizing concepts
such as consideration of the needs of the site, mutual adaptation, site
involvement in problem identification and choosing the solution, and external
assistance during the change process. Labs began looking at their roles
differently and federal policy began emphasizing the facilitative role labs
served in dissemination (Bagenstos, 1989:31).
Hutchins (1989:17) says that part of the reason National Institute of
Education (NIE) rejected the Office of Education (OE) strategies for
dissemination was that newer studies had identified the relative "naivete of
the linear model of R&D that initially was used as the basis for federal
dissemination efforts." Strategies NIE designed to address the complexities
associated with utilization included the Local Problem Solving Program (which
had some similarities to the State Dissemination Capacity Building Program),
Far West Laboratory's Research, Development, Dissemination, and Evaluation
efforts, and the Research and Development Utilization (RDU) Program. The Local
Problem Solving Program funded local organizations for development of their
own innovations to meet their locally determined needs. The RDU Program
represents a middle of the road approach. An approach that avoids the product
advocacy perspective (prevalent at OE) and the local development or bottoms-up
perspective. Instead they tried to link users to resource systems more
systematically than the Local Problem Solving Program (Ibid, 18-19). The RDU
Program acknowledged the importance of local commitment and of the use of
high-quality resources from other sources rather than local development.
In an effort to reconcile differences among federal dissemination
programs two forums were held. The first forum produced a consensus statement
defining dissemination that hopefully would lead to greater collaboration
among the dissemination programs. The differing models underlying the
differences: Research Development Dissemination & Evaluation model, the social
interaction model, problem-solver model, and the linkage model (Ibid, 22).
The interaction and problem-solver models have elements useful in a prosumer
approach to knowledge utilization.
Hutchins' concluding remarks highlight the cutbacks in the remaining
programs--ERIC, NDN, and Regional Educational Laboratories--, the lack of new
dissemination emphasis, and the focus on new reform movements rather than
product- or research-based improvements. He references a 1983 study by the
Network in Massachusetts that documented the lack of evidence over a 25-year
period for one strategy being any better than another. "Quality information,
technical assistance, organizational development, all delivered through a
complex set of cooperating organizations and people, produce change" (Ibid,
23).
Hutchins pointed to the funding differences of 47 cents for launching
agricultural dissemination efforts per dollar for research and demonstration
to 10 cents for launching educational dissemination efforts. He expressed
concern that "the proponents of the new changes in education have not spent
any more time thinking out how schools change than their counterparts in the
1960's did. The hypodermic needle approach seems to have been replaced with a
club to the head. The assumption seems to be that if the states just mandate
these programs, change will occur. History seems to be repeating itself. The
question is whether we are willing to learn from history" (Ibid).
Other authors highlight features or lack of features in the federal
education dissemination policy. Bagenstos recommends a research component to
accompany federal dissemination activities (1989:35). Komoski identifies
problems with consumer information in education and the need for the
Department of Education to make solving those problems a major priority of
educational policy (1989:54-56). Klein provides examples of efforts to
synthesize knowledge and suggests how research and development efforts could
contribute to improved synthesis (1989:64-70).
Klein, Gwaltney, and Payer (1990) charted the present infrastructure
of dissemination efforts by the United States Department of Education. They
distributed the dissemination functions of spread, choice, exchange, and
implementation across general or multi-purpose dissemination components. They
gave examples of special purpose dissemination components and potential new
components such as consensus panels and treasure chest. The chart that follows
also identifies potential new components including consensus panels and
computerized treasure chests.
II. HISTORY OF SPECIAL EDUCATION DISSEMINATION & USE
Backer (1986) summarized the history of dissemination efforts specific
to special education. The Bureau of Education for the Handicapped (BEH) and
later the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) have been responsible
for educational technology funding for disabled children in schools. The
passage of the Education of the Handicapped Act in 1975 provided a broader
mandate for development and dissemination of innovative curriculum and
educational technology. Evaluations of BEH approaches to date conducted in
1976 and 1978 by the Contract Research Corporation pointed to low levels of
dissemination and use of BEH funded products. Few developers attempted such
activities. Factors affecting such innovation transfer included the small
population size, the heterogeneity of the population, the increased size and
subsequent demand for innovations, and the mainstreaming context of the
innovations (Backer, 1986:60).
One in-house study in l976 suggested a need for a new face for
dissemination strategies (Ibid). No longer would one uniform strategy be
sufficient for dissemination. Some dissemination strategies needed full
support by the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped (BEH) while others
needed either a combination of BEH support plus private or public funding or
non-BEH sources. The concept of marketing rather than dissemination would also
add to improved utilization. Recommendations such as those impacted on the
subsequent decade of activities in special education.
Backer described a number of projects and activities supported by the
Office of Special Education Programs. Those include, but are not limited to,
the following: market linkage, curriculum adaptation, analysis of marketing
educational technology software, research in progress project, Specialnet (a
computer network), Special Education Software Center, National Network
Resource Directory, Center for Special Education Technology Information
Exchange, technical assistance for local school districts, Regional Resource
Centers, Early Childhood Education Program, and the Handicapped Children's
Early Education Program (HCEEP). The latter program created in 1969 was
evaluated by Littlejohn for a ten-year period. Findings included facts such
as eighty percent of 280 projects studied continued to serve children
independent of HCEEP funding and that state and national impact of its
programs has been varied and extensive.
III. HISTORY OF RESEARCH UTILIZATION IN RSA/NIDRR
Several structural changes not dissimilar to those in education marked
the development of research utilization in the rehabilitation field. The
Vocational Rehabilitation Administration (VRA) became the Rehabilitation
Services Administration (RSA) and changed department auspices several times.
The National Institute on Handicapped Research (NIHR) began taking on many of
the rehabilitation research and utilization activities previously funded and
monitored by VRA/RSA. Creating a Division of Research Information and
Utilization within NIHR gave even more legitimacy to the effort. Today NIHR is
known as the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research
(NIDRR) and oversees the major utilization studies and practices.
Reviews of research utilization activities in the rehabilitation field
include those by Backer (1986), Senkevitch and Roth (1981), Reynolds and
Vachon (1980), Hamilton and Muthard (1975), Engstrom (1975, 1970, 1969),
Murphy (1975), Havelock (1974, 1969), Rogers (1971, 1967), Usdane (1971),
Bolton (1979, 1974) and Boldin, Margolin, and Stotsky (1969). Backer (1986)
astutely observes that "in a sense, rehabilitation more than many other human
service fields has been utilization-oriented, because the field itself has
always been results-oriented."
In discussing research utilization efforts in the rehabilitation field
this section begins with the kinds of utilization activities, moves to the
phases of utilization efforts, and concludes with the unresolved issues and
signs for the future of research utilization activities.
A. Its beginnings: Research & Demonstrations
The impetus for formalized knowledge utilization efforts in the
rehabilitation field, according to Hamilton and Muthard (1975), stemmed from a
1966 meeting of the Joint Liaison Committee of the Council of State
Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation and the Rehabilitation Counselor
Educators. They met in Miami that year to consider "the state of the art...in
the communication, dissemination, and utilization of rehabilitation research
information." Why? Because the new research and demonstration programs of the
late fifties were flooding the Central Office with volumes of reports that the
limited central office staff could not monitor and distribute. At that
meeting William Usdane, head of the division for research and demonstration,
overviewed the dissemination and utilization activities practiced at that
time. "These activities included stocking and distributing final research
reports, publishing an annotated listing of funded projects and a bibliography
of project reports, funding selected demonstration projects, and sponsoring
projects specifically related to research utilization" (Hamilton and Muthard,
1975:2).
Everett Rogers, a communications specialist, also spoke at that
meeting. He identified for that Committee six system-related elements that
hindered utilization efforts:
--The social system into which the innovation is being
introduced is composed of professionals.
--The sources of innovation are often far removed from
the receivers or potential adopters.
--The hierarchical structures existing in the VR field
often act as barriers or resistant forces to the
diffusion of innovations.
--The type of innovation decision is often 'forced' rather
than 'optional' and is likely to be made collectively
rather than individually.
--VR innovations seldom have high relative advantage and
their consequences are often difficult to measure and
evaluate.
--The 'closure' orientation of VR personnel serves to
divert attention from consideration of innovative ideas
(Ibid, 2).
Among his recommendations was one proposing a nationwide experimental program
using change agents within the vocational rehabilitation system (Ibid, 4).
The 1966 Vocational Rehabilitation Administration Task Force on
Research Utilization considered Roger's idea as well as ideas gleaned from a
VRA-funded study on the transfer of innovations in Goodwill Industries (Ibid,
4).
B. Research Utilization Specialists & Laboratories
In 1969, under a five-year federally funded Research Utilization
Program, nine research utilization specialists (RUS) began exploring ways to
overcome some of the obstacles Rogers had identified. They looked at a variety
of ways to get state vocational rehabilitation agencies to use the results of
increasing numbers of rehabilitation research projects. They used varied
awareness and interest development strategies including dissemination of
abstracts, research reports, newsletters, annotated bibliographies,
unsolicited information packages in attractive, convenient-to-use forms as
well as conference exhibits, research reviews at staffings, and seminars. To
promote trial, evaluation, and adoption of the findings, the research
utilization specialists initiated contact with potential leaders. In some
instances the RUS conducted needs surveys, linked researchers and service
providers, and offered technical assistance to users of research.
The nine research utilization specialists thought of themselves as
change agents modeled after the highly successful agricultural change agents.
Both initiated contact with potential users, usually with an innovation or set
of research findings in hand to promote. In some instances, they began with
the identified needs and then searched for relevant innovations or research
results. Success varied for a number of reasons. Some related to the quality
and nature of the research product and its packaging. Some related to the
characteristics of the state rehabilitation agencies in which the innovations
were to be used. Some related to the individuals intended as users and still
others related to the change agent. Glaser and Backer were among the first to
evaluate the specialists' approach (Backer, 1986).
The federal director of the National Research Utilization Specialists
Project, George Engstrom, wrote at the conclusion of the projects and the
evaluations--
Project results clearly indicate that research utilization
is a system, it cannot reside in only one individual within
a social service agency....the successful change agent will
share the tasks which make up a research utilization
system--using the services of a librarian for information
storage and retrieval, turning the conduct and evaluation of
demonstration projects over to those responsible for
ultimate adoption, and returning administrative control of a
newly-introduced and stabilized program to the appropriate
agency staff member (Hamilton & Muthard, 1975:138).
During this time period the federal office produced Research
Utilization Guidelines and Guidelines for Preparing Final Research &
Demonstration Reports. The Regional Rehabilitation Research Institute in
Research Utilization based at the University of Florida conducted pioneering
research studies on the research utilization process and developed in
collaboration with Research and Training Centers packages of information on
RTC innovations (Backer, 1986). They also developed a manual on research
utilization, a review of 25 "best-practice" projects, and the compilation of
experiences from the RUSs (Backer, 1986).
Research Utilization Laboratories begun in conjunction with, and as an
extension to, the National Research Utilization Specialists Project carried
the utilization banner up to the l980's. The laboratories assumed the
responsibility for taking an "identified body of rehabilitation research
findings and translating it into a form usable by professionals in the field"
(Backer, 1986:46). In 1977 to 1979 the National Institute for Advanced
Studies evaluated the four laboratories based in New York, Chicago, Texas, and
Virginia to determine impact and help strengthen their effectiveness.
C. Publications, conferences, and information centers
Publications, conferences, and national information centers became
prominent next in the growth of the rehabilitation research utilization
program. Many of these early efforts continue to impact the field of
rehabilitation. An early ongoing activity supporting the dissemination and
utilization effort is a publication known as the Rehab Brief (known as the R &
D Briefs in the early days). That four-page publication summarizes and
highlights one or more related research studies several times a year. The
writing style makes reading research results easier and enjoyable for all
potential users. For researchers, especially in Research and Training Centers,
a publication known as the Informer provided updates on research in progress
as well as completed projects. This publication was discontinued.
Directories of national information sources related to handicapping
conditions, published initially by the Clearinghouse on the Handicapped, have
been updated by Harold Russell Associates and are currently being updated
again. Among privately sponsored publications contributing to the information
dissemination efforts are: the Rehabilitation Gazette, Disabled USA, and the
Annual Review of Rehabilitation which evolved from a series of
state-of-the-art monographs known as Emerging Issues in Rehabilitation
(Backer, 1986). The Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin summarized in a special
issue the research utilization activities in 1975.
Research utilization conferences, at least in regions such as
Rehabilitation Services Administration Region 3, became an annual event. These
conferences were known as the Regional Rehabilitation Research Institutes in
Research Utilization and featured selected research topics. Researchers
summarized their findings for administrators, supervisors, and trainers from
the rehabilitation service delivery system who attended the conferences.
Teleconferences enabled national audiences to participate simultaneously in
learning about new developments without having to travel beyond their
communities.
A feasibility study recommended the establishment of a National
Rehabilitation Information Center (NARIC) which collects, stores, retrieves,
and disseminates REHABDATA, much of which comes from federally sponsored
research. REHABDATA today is available by computer through a telephone line,
in person, or by mail. In its initial conception its target audiences were
researchers, policymakers, administrators, and practitioners. Later people
with disabilities became a prime target group. ABLEDATA is a related
electronic data base and information center that focuses on technology,
adaptive devices useful for improving the quality of life of people with
disabilities. While it began under the NARIC umbrella, it has since become a
separately funded NIDRR program. The President's Committee on Employment of
the Handicapped sponsors a related database of job accommodations using
technology, adaptive devices, and other forms of job modifications. It is
known as JAN and initially targeted employers.
The National Clearinghouse for Rehabilitation Training Materials,
sponsored by the Rehabilitation Services Administration, became a repository
for training materials such as course outlines, curricula, and audiovisual
aids.
Most of the grants funded by NIDRR (whether these be related to
Research and Training Centers, Rehabilitation Engineering Centers, Research
and Demonstration, Field Initiated Research, Innovation) are expected to have
a dissemination component. Many of the researchers disseminate their findings
through journal articles, conference presentations or exhibits, and reports
for distribution themselves or through the national information centers. Some
have developed films and videos or provided technical assistance consultation
(Backer, 1986). Today some research grants and fellowships focus only on
knowledge dissemination and utilization.
D. Technology transfer
In the seventies, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
sought ways to apply its scientific findings to the benefit of people with
disabilities. They explored with selected researchers and research utilization
specialists ways to best transfer their technology to the rehabilitation
field.
The Rehabilitation Engineering Centers, in conjunction with their
professional association the Rehabilitation Engineering Society of North
America (RESNA) and the National Association of Rehabilitation Research and
Training Centers (NARRTC), have explored issues surrounding transferring
technology. Among the problems identified in technology transfer are the
expense of the devices, potential outdatedness due to lags in patenting,
producing and distributing the devices, and the small market size that limits
its appeal to potential manufacturers and marketers of adaptive devices. The
Rehabilitation Engineering Centers helped identify the need for ABLEDATA to
help them stay abreast of new devices for differing disabling conditions.
E. Regional Information Exchange (RIE) Projects
After the funding of Research Utilization Laboratories and Research
Utilization Specialists with subsequent utilization project evaluations,
leaders of the utilization efforts explored new directions. They were
impressed with the successes of the National Diffusion Network in the
Department of Education and decided to investigate elements of this approach
for rehabilitation beginning on a regional level. The successful
identification and diffusion of exemplary practices by the Regional
Rehabilitation Exchange Program in Texas led to the funding of several similar
programs. Each Regional Information Exchange has its panel of reviewers of
potentially exemplary programs. They identify the criteria and select
exemplary programs to promote and apply in other locations. The RIEs help
interested organizations in their respective regions to become aware of
exemplary practices, interact with those practices when needed, and implement
them with or without adaptations.
One exemplary practice identified and funded for utilization, though
not directly under one of the Regional Information Exchange Projects, came
from Georgia. Their Management Control Project was pilot tested in three
state agencies and subsequently selected and promoted for use by other states.
More than thirteen states had adopted that system either fully or partially by
1986 and more are adopting it even in 1991. Federal funds helped assure the
resources--financial, physical, and human--necessary to make utilization a
success.
F. International programs
Two NIDRR sponsored international programs promote cross cultural
information exchange on rehabilitation problems. The programs are known as the
International Exchange of Experts and Information in Rehabilitation and are
currently located on the East and West Coasts of the United States of America.
The programs offer fellowships, publish and disseminate field study reports or
monographs, sponsor seminars, and conduct other areas of international
development. The World Institute on Disability that coordinates the West Coast
program is operated by persons with disabilities and is considered a public
policy center promoting the use of research, public education, training and
model program development as a way to create a more accessible and supportive
society. They work closely with Rehabilitation International, the federation
of 120 disability organizations in 80 countries.
G. State-of-the-art studies
A NARIC spin-off group known as DATA Institute facilitated the
development of more than forty Rehabilitation Research Reviews to summarize
the knowledge gathered to that date on disability and rehabilitation topics.
These reviews were an outgrowth of recommendations by Reynolds and Vachon in
their 1980 report to the newly created National Institute on Handicapped
Research.
H. Phases of rehabilitation utilization activities
Backer (1986:56) divided the timelines of federally-funded utilization
activities in rehabilitation into the early phase, phase 1, and phase 2 (see
chart following). He defines the early phase as 1955-1968 during which time
key people such as William Usdane, Mary Switzer, and Everett Rogers and key
organizations such as Council of State Administrators of Vocational
Rehabilitation, National Council of Rehabilitation Educators, and the
Vocational Rehabilitation Administration laid the ground work for the kinds of
activities launched in the seventies and the eighties. That ground work
includes emphasis on applied research, the funding of demonstration projects,
and the development of a research utilization taskforce with a subsequent
conference and designing of a formal research utilization program. He also
includes in this phase a research fellowship on information retrieval by Neil
Dumas and a white paper on training of Research Utilization Specialists.
Backer dates Phase 1 from 1969 to 1979. That phase features the
National Research Utilization Specialist Demonstration Program and Research
Utilization Laboratories. It includes the RULE Project that brought potential
users into the research setting to see demonstrations and the Visiting
Consultant Project that took the demonstrations to the potential user. It
includes the projects evaluating utilization efforts. Evaluations of research
utilization practices in the rehabilitation field referenced by Backer (1986)
included those by Glaser and Backer from 1972 to 1975, by the National
Institute for Advanced Studies from 1977 to 1979, by the U. S. Department of
Labor examining practices in four federal agencies (date not given), and by
Havelock in collaboration with Glaser, Lippitt, Markowitz, Ramirez, and Rogers
(1974). These seventies studies set the stage for research utilization
directions in the eighties.
Phase 1 also included the beginnings of the SRS Research Information
System, SRS Research Utilization Guidelines, a feasibility study for and the
eventual establishment of the National Rehabilitation Information Center. In
addition, research utilization efforts launced key research utilization
conferences and the Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin devoted a special issue
to research utilization.
Phase II beginning in 1980, according to Backer, is marked by an
emphasis on best practices in utilization. Georgia's Management Control
Project and its spread to more than thirteen states was an excellent example
of the best practices concept. Regionalized approaches to information
exchange also mark this phase. Studies such as one conducted by Harold
Russell Associates add knowledge on how far the rehabilitation field (and
society) has come and has yet to go in addressing the needs of people with
disabilities. During this time period Switzer Fellowships in research
utilization entered the picture of federally sponsored utilization efforts.
Entering the nineties the National Institute on Disability and
Rehabilitation Research had in place knowledge production and structuring
through its array of Research and Training Centers, Research and Demonstration
Projects, Field Initiated Research, Innovation Projects, the Business
Innovation Projects, Fellowships, and Research Training and Career
Development. It also has plans to set up consensus panels for integrating and
legitimizing knowledge. To cover storage and distribution, NIDRR funds the
National Rehabilitation Information Center with its REHABDATA (NARIC),
ABLEDATA (products database online), and SERIES (an online bulletin board
system for independent living centers). Its targeted dissemination and
utilization efforts include the Regional Information Exchange Programs (RIE),
the International Exchange of Experts and Information in Rehabilitation (cross
cultural exchange progams), and REHAB BRIEFS (summary of selected research
reports). NIDRR also funds technology creation and transfer through
Rehabilitation Engineering Centers in conjunction with the Rehabilitation
Engineering Society of North America (RESNA) and state technical assistance
grants.
I. Challenges, strategies, unresolved issues
Havelock and his collaborators (1974) identified the needs and limits
to getting information to five different user categories. For policymakers,
decisionmakers, or administrators with their busy schedules, they thought it
important to provide compressed nuggets of information, well summarized and
synthesized. For practitioners the authors said to provide information on how
to do it or how to avoid doing it as well as what to do and what not to do.
For clients they said:
No known RU system can effectively reach ten million users directly.
Furthermore, the types of knowledge transformations and derivations required
to reach clients directly are sometimes the most expensive and most far
removed from the oriiginal products of research. Hence, while it is
appropriate to retain the concept of direct client service as a long term
ideal objective, it is probably prudent to focus the attentions of a fledgling
RU system on less ambitious targets (Havelock et al, 1974:4). For the general
public they concluded "All they need is enough (a) to make them aware of
problems and needs of their fellow citizens, and (b) to assure them that
broadly speaking, existing and planned programs of R&D are working or not
working"(Ibid, 5). For research and development workers the federal research
utilization system needs to "serve as an important mediator and stimulator of
linkages across this interface" (Ibid). They concluded that fundamental to
the design of a workable cost-effective research utilization system was the
importance of some users being conduits to other users because all users are
not equal (Ibid). The prosumer approach recognizes the equal importance of
each of these user categories and the conditions under which conduits may not
be required.
Reynolds and Vachon in their 1980 recommendations for utilization in
the newly established National Institute on Handicapped Research included
"develop a system to provide disabled individuals with information about
research progress and technological innovations, develop an effective
information base of rehabilitation research and knowledge....related
statistics" (Backer, 1986:52). Subsequently, the National Rehabilitation
Information Center expanded its target audience to include people with
disabilities as well as researchers who contributed the bulk of the
information in that center. The Harris poll on disability, the reprinting of
the Digest of Data on Persons with Disabilities, and the funding of studies
related to statistics are a few of the ways NIDRR has begun to address the
statistics on disability component.
Backer (1986) in reviewing the state of the art in rehabilitation and
special education identified four challenges of utilization. The challenges
included the view that utilization requires change (which is hard), resources,
and adopters who are convinced the innovation will work in their organizations
and are aware of the innovative program or practice. The prosumer approach
would help reduce the "hardness" of the change because potential users help
identify the need for change, the methods for change, and the kinds of change
to make.
In the 1986 review Backer identified six key strategies for
utilization. They encompass: interpersonal contact, planning and conceptual
foresight, outside consultation on the change process, user-oriented
transformation of information, individual and organizational championship,
and potential user involvement. The prosumer approach incorporates most of
these strategies.
Unresolved issues in utilization, also identified by Backer (1986),
included: (1) poor coordination of rehabilitation and special education
utilization activities, (2) the adaptation of strategies from other fields
without key success ingredients, (3) uneven support for the programs, (4) use
of quick fixes without considering the larger issues of change, (5) omission
of people with disabilities and family members in utilization activities, (6)
too few training opportunities for professionals, policymakers, and consumers
in the principles and strategies of utilization, (7) inadequate integration of
private sector organizations into public sector utilization actitivities, (8)
inadequate integration of employers into utilization activities, and (9)
inadequate coordination of utilization activities with policymaking activities
in rehabilitation and special education. Many of these unresolved issues are
addressed in the prosumer approach.
J. Signs pointing to change
Emener spoke at a 1986 National Education Forum sponsored by the
National Clearinghouse of Rehabilitation Training Materials and others.
Echoing Engstrom's systems theme to express the relationship between research
and utilization efforts, he said: "The system, the big system (rehabilitation
services, agencies, practice, education, and research, among others) has to
build research into the heart, the blood stream, the infrastructure of the
system" (NCRTM, 1986:19).
Of the five priorities to be addressed under a knowledge dissemination
and utilization project sponsored by the National Institute on Disability and
Rehabilitation Research in 1988 to 1991, four had direct implications for
consumers. One involves training consumers in information access and training
consumer organizations in outreach strategies. Historically, consumer use of
research findings and technology has usually filtered down indirectly to them
through service providers. Yet this project was designed with the ultimate
benefactor in mind. Perhaps this is pointing the way to the utilization
studies and practices in the nineties, ones characterized by an integration of
all individuals involved in the rehabilitation process and a fading of the
lines of demarcation among them.
SUMMARY:
This chapter has looked historically at the dissemination and
utilization efforts by rehabilitation and educational programs under the
federal Department of Education. They include a wide range of approaches:
information centers using electronic databases and linked to bibliographic
retrieval systems; research summaries, reviews, briefs, and directories; state
capacity building programs and local problem solving programs; research
utilization specialists, research utilization laboratories, regional
information exchange programs, technology exchange, and international
exchange. What is not yet included but envisioned are consensus panels.
Klein, Gwaltney, and Payer (1990) summarized the kinds of dissemination
efforts as proactive, reactive, and interactive or utilization to achieve
change in attitudes or behaviors.
Some of the barriers to utilization that Rogers identified in 1966
still prevail today: (l) separation between innovation and potential users,
(2) professionals are the focal point for introduction, (3) innovation
decision is likely to be forced rather than optional and collective rather
than individual, and (4) the closure orientation of personnel in the field
diverts attention away from innovation considerations. The prosumer approach
can help break down many of those barriers.
A LOOK AHEAD:
The next chapter describes the studies on factors related to research
outputs and potential users. It highlights the ambiguities that have emerged
in studies of factors and the interrelatedness of them.
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