On research uptake and quantitative research: a conversation in a park
It’s a typical English Summer day, an overcast sky, an intermittent drizzle and the two British academics I am scheduled to meet are seated , equally typically, outside the café, in the rain, under a garden umbrella. They are undoubtedly Sri Lankanophiles, and our conversation is largely social and mostly about Sri Lanka and about the Olympics, but we touch on the subject of DFID’s funding of research in general, their social science research funding in particular. It’s clear that the academics are uncomfortable with concepts like research uptake, or theory of change – the stuff that constitutes my day to day work. Obviously loads to be done in the bridging research and policy area. The academics find the articulation of a theory of change for a research project difficult, because they see it as needing to presume the outcomes of the research before the research is conducted, and insist that that is what is in the ‘guidelines’ provided by the grant giving institutions.