ABSTRACT
The study of welfare and social policy provides a subtle analysis of the substantive issues involved in the nature of the research/policy alliance. Usability studies are an attempt to answer questions about the usefulness of particular types of information for the policy process. Human beings have only a limited cognitive capacity to grasp the complexity inherent in the social world, and social science research is inherently inconclusive. Studies of knowledge diffusion are similar to the other studies of the use of knowledge, but they tend to use a very different time frame in examining the research/policy interplay. All the various studies of usability, use, and diffusion share the assumptions in varying degrees accept a dichotomy between the knowing and the acting person and take as a premise that knowledge should inform action. The chapter reviews a study of the interplay between research and policy under a very different assumption about the nature of the interplay between knowing and acting.
