Speaking Truth to Power... or to the Ivory Tower? Public Affairs Researchers′ Reports of Practitioners′ Use of Their Research

We test a model pertaining to practitioners ' use of public affairs research. The data are from a survey of journal article authors, focusing on authors ' reports of use of their research by practitioners. The survey asks about articles authored by the respondents and published in one of seven leading public affairs journals between 2015 and 2019. Results show that 29.7% of published articles examined are reported by the respondents to have been used by practitioners. Regression results show that practitioner use is affected by authors ' motivations for the work, whether practitioners are involved in the research, researchers ' strategies for communicating their research, and choice of media for distributing results.