THE CONTRIBUTION OF LONGITUDINAL-STUDIES FOR UNDERSTANDING SCIENCE COMMUNICATION AND RESEARCH UTILIZATION

Any estimate of the extent and impact of communication between scienti sts and practitioners is fraught with methodological problems, especia lly for application to the social sciences. In medicine and in the nat ural and physical sciences, research utilization can sometimes be meas ured by the actual use of different techniques. But the word ''utiliza tion'' implies some association to instruments and tools and, for soci al science research, utilization can be more complex, varying from mod ification (knowledge creep), nonuse, or whole use, to use of the resul ts in a different way than the sender intended This article describes a longitudinal, in-depth study of municipal-level environmental and he alth officers in Sweden showing that there is more communication betwe en practitioners and the world of research than other studies imply.