From Text Books to Footpaths: Making Real-World Research Stick at the Coal Face

Abstract

When research is complete and findings concluded, is research really just about publishing findings? Have you ever wondered whether your research will have any real impact in the world? In our opinion, we believe a bigger obstacle awaits us at the end of a research project. This being the implementation of research findings. We share with you our combined experience spanning over three decades of research – the challenges and learnings we have gathered along the way as we aim to translate research findings into real world, everyday practical reality. Our research experience is generally about human behaviour and psychology within the forensic population. As a result, the implementation of findings is crucial to inform policy makers, practitioners, local community agencies and government departments about the way to work with this population. In this chapter we provide a practical step-by-step approach to how we aim to implement our findings in research. We look at the problem of linking between theory and practice alongside what is currently in practice today. We discuss the challenges we have faced and what we have done to ‘Making real-world research stick at the coal face’. We wish you all the best with your research and hope that you find it as challenging and rewarding as we have!

Citation

Lambie, I. and Ioane, J. (2012), "From Text Books to Footpaths: Making Real-World Research Stick at the Coal Face", Bowen, E. and Brown, S. (Ed.) Perspectives on Evaluating Criminal Justice and Corrections (Advances in Program Evaluation, Vol. 13), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 231-243. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1474-7863(2012)0000013015