Discourse Research Utilization: Current Issues, Questions, and Debates

What is apparent in both the study and the application of research utilization principles and methods is that it is a social process. Our understanding of research utilization has been profoundly influenced by the body of knowledge around diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1995), and studies informing its theoretical underpinnings have come from such diverse disciplines as rural sociology, communications, marketing and managing, health promotion, and medical sociology. There has been an exponential growth in the number of publications in the area (Rogers) and, equally significant, a widening of the theoretical perspectives from which it is viewed. Diffusion research itself has followed the pattern of the innovations it describes: early adopters developing new ideas and methods which in turn are taken up by more members of the research community. What is still not clear, however, is the amount of theoretical overlap between diffusion research and such issues as research utilization, research implementation, or, most recently, evidence-based practice (Estabrooks, 1998).