PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH - NEW APPROACHES TO THE RESEARCH TO PRACTICE DILEMMA

The dissemination of research into practice presents an enduring chall enge to the social sciences. Despite intervention research focused on individuals with disabilities and their families that reveals clear pa thways to improving practice, researchers and practitioners alike expr ess concern regarding limited and slow implementation of the results o f research in typical school and community settings. This article revi ews three widely disparate literatures concerned with the gap between research and practice, highlighting suggestions for narrowing the gap through the incorporation of elements of practice into the research pr ocess. For each of the steps in our research on the social relationshi ps of children and youth, we present examples of participatory researc h approaches to decision making designed to increase the relevance and validity of findings for everyday practice. We conclude with criteria that might be applied to the design of effective interventions for re search validation to increase the likelihood that the results of inter vention research will be adopted by school and community constituencie s.