We began this book by highlighting that sometimes research has an impact and sometimes it does not. We made it clear that we were interested in understanding the processes of influence of research-based knowledge in policy and practice arenas, how such influence is mediated, blocked or amplified, and how the praxis of policy making and service delivery may change in the face of a deeper degree of research engagement. More than this, we pinned our colours to a positive agenda: a belief that by understanding research use processes we would be in a better position to encourage an increase in their scale, scope and effectiveness. Our clear expectation here is that such enhancements of research use (inclusively defined) will, for the most part, be to the betterment of democratic discourse, public policy making, service organisation and the quality of public services.

Of course, along the way we have noted the irony that any evidence that increases in research use have indeed made the world a better place is at best partial and contested, and some would say is largely absent. Moreover, we have been at pains throughout to acknowledge that radical criticism of the research use ‘project’ has been a constant feature of debates throughout. Indeed, some commentators (albeit largely from an academic base rather than from policy or practice settings, and often driven from narrow conceptualisations of what it means to ‘use’ evidence) would condemn the enterprise as being pernicious or, worse, outrageous and oppressive: for example, Holmes et al (2006, p 180) assert that ‘the evidence-based movement in health sciences constitutes a good example of microfascism’.

Given the twin challenges of sustained theoretical critique and an absence of empirical evidence, we will begin drawing together the thesis of this book by remaking the case for a somewhat privileged role for research-based evidence in public policy and service delivery. In exploring how research might contribute, we will draw attention to the diversity of work that comes under the rubric ‘social research’ and we shall again make it clear that we are not concerned to defend hard-and-fast rules as to what actually counts as research, opting instead for an inclusive eclecticism.