Following this, methodologies to assess impact and to enhance the usefulness of policy research can be developed. Part 1 of this paper reviews what is known about the workings of the policy process, and examines the factors affecting the use of research information by policymakers in this process. Among these are the interests of the actors involved in the policy process, the nature of the policy environment in which they operate, and the characteristics of research itself. In Part 2, the authors develop a conceptual framework for understanding how research information is produced, communicated, and ultimately used in the policy process, based on the ideas developed in Part 1. The framework provides the basis for a proposal for a study to more closely examine the hypotheses about the use of information in the policy process developed in Part 1.
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