On Translation: From Research Findings to Public Utility

ings for public use, one might assume that all is for naught. Yet in traditional academic settings, it is often considered enough to complete a study for an exclusive and academic audience. Regardless of the significance of the findings, all too often such studies are published in obscure journals with minimal public circulation. These traditional notions of qualitative research and application should not be taken as acceptable norms in today's academic and public circles. In this article I first suggest why qualitative research is frequently neither discussed nor used by the broad public. I consider five barriers to making research more accessible to policy-related and practitioner-related audiences. I then discuss how qualitative research might be made more germane to the problems that diverse groups face in their everyday lives. In doing so, my goal is to offer constructive ways to make qualitative research findings more accessible to the multiple publics that exist for social science research.