Network Interventions to Improve Search and Facilitate Research-Practice Transfer

Research-practice transfer involves bidirectional communication between researchers and practitioners, while the research-practice gap refers to breakdowns in this communication. Network interventions are often viewed as a promising way to bridge this gap. However the focus has primarily been on interventions designed to facilitate researchers' ability to push out (i.e., disseminate) their research. In this paper, we propose three simple network interventions designed to facilitate practitioners' ability to pull in (i.e., search for) useful research: (1) relying on multiple sources of information to avoid dead ends, (2) relying on well-connected sources of information to avoid echo chambers and (3) relying on sources of information outside their own community to reach brokers. Simulations suggest that all three interventions have the potential to improve both the success (i.e., reach a target researcher) and efficiency (i.e., in fewer intermediate steps) of practitioners' search for researchers in their social networks. We conclude with a discussion of how and where these network interventions might be useful.