There has long been a tendency among policy researchers in food and agriculture to view ministries of finance and agriculture as their main, if not only, constituencies. This paper argues that greater insight that links the outcomes of research to real policy problems and processes makes for better scientific inquiry. The author contends that policy research needs to recognize multiple constituencies from the onset of the research process. This paper discusses requirements for effective policy research incorporating broad participation and ownership of the research process and presents this approach in the context of IFPRI's research on urban farming in Uganda and food insecurity awareness generation in Ghana. The benefits and implications for using this approach are highlighted.
To briefly summarize, the author has found that the benefits include:
- drawing stakeholders into the research process while infusing the research with their concerns;
- creating the possibility of a dialog with constituents of divergent views;
- identifying/he objective experimentationvariables and the subjective influences that impact research;
- capturing information that cannot be retrieved from a formal literature review;
- creating interest and demand for relevant research results;
- drawing attention to previously unidentified constituencies and their role in the policy process; and
- bringing analytical insight that enhances the scholarly quality of the research.
The paper emphasizes that outreach that feeds research results into the policy process requires a cultivation of constituencies and that broad-based participatory research that incorporates long-term relevance into the research process has proven quite useful. Finally, although multiple divergent perspectives rarely lead to convergent opinion, the author suggests that the benefits derived from this approach bring to bear multiple paths of relevant exploration otherwise left unexposed.
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