Frequently Asked Questions About Research Utilization

1. What is RUSH?
   Funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), the Research Utilization Support and Help (RUSH) Project will work to expand awareness, strategies, and evaluation of knowledge utilization outcomes among NIDRR supported researchers in order to increase access and use of research results by those that can most benefit from them.
   
   
2. What is the difference between dissemination and utilization (D&U)?
   It is useful to think of dissemination as primarily the process of knowledge transfer - the who, what, when, and how of moving ideas and information from the source(s) to intended recipient(s).
   Utilization, on the other hand, speaks more specifically to purpose and impact - why you want people to get the research outcomes you're putting forth, what use you want people to make of the ideas, information, or products, and how people are actually getting them. Utilization is a critical element in increasing the effective reach of disability research outcomes.
   Focusing only on the "D" in "D&U" is like dialing nine numbers of a ten-digit telephone number: You may be 90 percent finished, but unless you dial that last digit, you'll never make the intended connection.
   
   
3. Whom does utilization benefit?
   Successful utilization ensures broad access to and application of research findings for the benefit of people with disabilities, families of people with disabilities, service providers, disability organizations, policy makers, and other researchers. An increase in utilization research is likely to effect these beneficiaries in terms of improvements in awareness, attitudes, policies, social behaviors, and economics.
   
   
4. What are the challenges to effective utilization?
   The process of moving new understandings and new products from research into practice can be long and cumbersome. Utilization is not a uniform process in which one size fits all, and the development of new utilization models requires recognition of a wide array of "variables." Construction of successful utilization models from which strategies to achieve effective utilization may be derived requires consideration of the intended users, researchers in this case: their worries, beliefs, constraints, and priorities, and the people and organizations whose opinions they tend to value.
   
   
5. What is utilization measurement?
   To understand how effectively you are reaching your audiences - not merely in terms of whether audience members hear a public service announcement about employment of people with disabilities, for example, but in terms of how listeners do or do not apply the information they hear - you must have some means of evaluating use. The role of evaluation in relation to the D&U process is to help NIDRR researchers understand (1) how much and (2) how effectively consumers (or other targeted groups) are using the research outcomes that have been disseminated.
   
   
6. What are research outcomes?
   Research outcomes are the changes and/or improvements, both planned and unplanned, produced through a project's designed activities, inputs, and outputs and represent the key elements of utilization measurement. Outcomes are commonly divided into three forms: short-term, intermediate, and long-term. Short term outcomes develop awareness while intermediate outcomes involve improved service practices and policy decisions pertaining to a target population. Long-term outcomes refer to overall transitions in conditions effecting target populations such as economics and social contexts.
   
   
7. Utilization: process or outcome?
   The RUSH Project will treat utilization as a process rather than an outcome to itself. Through offering NIDRR grantees a toolbox from which successful models of utilization may be derived, RUSH will demonstrate the necessary steps from dissemination and resource management to measurement of applied research findings which create the process of successful utilization.
   
   
8. What is the RUSH Toolbox?
   The RUSH Toolbox is a collection of online resources designed to assist researchers in identifying the specific variables necessary to create or maintain an integrated knowledge utilization plan for high-quality disability and rehabilitation research. The RUSH Toolbox will provide access to information related to dissemination and utilization that has been developed through the RUSH program in collaboration with grantees of NIDRR. Other useful resources or links to these resources will also be provided.