Australian survey indicates policy-makers still have major reservations about assigning priority to academic research

The disparity between academics’ perception of the impact of their research and the opinions of policy-makers was recently underlined by a team of researchers from the University of Queensland who undertook cross-sectional surveys and semi-structured interviews with social science academic researchers and personnel in policy-relevant roles in public sector agencies. Michele Ferguson, Brian Head, Adrian Cherney and Paul Boreham look at some of their key findings from the study and offer suggestions for how to improve partnerships between academics and public sector staff.