Making Research Usable Beyond Academic Circles: A Relational Model of Public Engagement

There is a growing recognition among researchers, university administrators, funding agencies, and the broader public that the knowledge produced in academia often remains divorced from impacts and use in real-world contexts. Across a wide range of disciplines, scholars have commonly followed one of two models to take research beyond peer-reviewed publications and contribute to the common good: the "Expert" model of public engagement and the "Community-Engaged" model. We present a relational model of public engagement that builds on strengths of these two existing pathways, but constitutes a distinctive third one. The relational model urges relationship building and mutual learning, as well as partnership during dissemination, while maintaining independence of thought, decision-making, and institutional affiliation during the processes of research design, data collection, and analysis. Researchers can maintain their intellectual and institutional independence while forging relationships of mutual learning with nonacademic audiences, who are not just recipients of knowledge but bring their own interpretations, motivations, and needs in relation to academic knowledge. We clarify the goals, challenges, audience roles, and relations between ethical values and research in the relational model. Researchers can tailor this model to the opportunities and constraints they face, given their specific disciplines, career phases, and individual strengths and proclivities.