Federal Funding and Social Science Research: the Emergent Transformation

A profound shift has occurred in the manner by which the federal government now distributes funds for policy related research in the social sciences. Whereas in the 1960s, the prime mechanism for funding research was through the grant, the 1970s has seen a shift to the use of the contract. The implications of this shift are important, not only for who will conduct the research, but the very nature and form of that research itself. The university and the university based researcher stand to lose the most in this transformation as more and more research is funded to those organizations specializing in contract research. Five implications are detailed with special reference to both where and who shall be central to large scale social science policy research in the years to come.