ABSTRACT
User engagement has become part of the rhetoric of educational (e.g. Levin 2004) and social science (e.g. Nutley 2003) research, and many funders (e.g. initially the Nuffield Foundation and more recently the Economic and Social Research Council [ESRC]) expect research applications to address issues of how users will be engaged in the research process. There is little agreement on what is meant by ‘user engagement’, who constitutes a ‘user’ or a shared understanding of the assumed relationship between the engagement of users and subsequent impact on policy. The current reality of user engagement often is limited to inviting policymakers and practitioners to discuss emerging findings and attempts to increase the accessibility of outputs.
