Investigating three samples of social policy research in The Netherlands, the authors analyzed the conditions and functions influencing utilization (impact). Interorganizational context, intergroup relations, and role interaction were found to relate to utilization. The impact of social policy research upon organizational decisions is cognitive, communicative, and diagnostic. The cognitive function correlates negatively with publishing for scholarly audiences. Of the communicative function, six feedback strategies were evaluated with targeting scoring highest on impact. In the diagnostic function, creating consensus among decision-making groups has the greatest impact on decision making. The results suggest the latent operation of a professional paradigm of social policy research, distinct from the disciplinary social science paradigm.

Intervening variables are analyzed for their impact on the transformation of social science intelligence into organization policies. Functions, structures, theories, and methods of applied social research are found to have a direct bearing upon the type and degree of utilization of research results in organizational decisions. Each of the four variables illustrates differences not only in procedures or instruments but also between the values and goals of applied and academic social research. The growing emphasis in academic circles upon methodological perfection and the growing integration of applied social research into organizational policies is bound to widen the discrepancy in values between the two professions, argue the authors. The message for the social researcher who wishes his data to be utilized is implied in the concluding section of this paper, which draws upon the results of a study of applying social science research to organizational change projects in the area of industrial and labor relations in The Netherlands.

In applied social research, variations in the utilization of results are more closely interrelated with methodological variations than in the so-called "pure" social sciences. In the following typology, three functions of applied social research are analyzed and related to differences in methodology. In a fourth model, variations in the organizational context of applied social research projects are compared for their impact upon organizational decision making. Together, the four models of feedback, change, control, and context constitute a comprehensive typology of the utilization and methodology of applied social research.

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