Research Projects
The CeKTER Center is engaged in two kinds of research activity.
Increase understanding of quality and relevance of NIDILRR-funded employment research by conducting reviews and syntheses using appropriate standards and methods.
There is a major lag between the generation of research findings in health services, including disability employment, and the utilization of these findings by stakeholders, such as service providers, consumers, and policy makers. KT1-R will conduct a systematic scoping review of NIDILRR employment research across disabilities, with a resulting synthesis of best practice. The purposes of this project are to:
- systematically review recent NIDILRR-funded and other disability employment research;
- assess the quality and relevance of the findings; and
- promote awareness and use of this research by providing syntheses tailored to the information acquisition preferences of stakeholder groups.
This scoping review will bring the vast array of knowledge into accessible outputs, thereby moving research closer to the hands of knowledge users.
Conduct research on knowledge translation methods or approaches to improve awareness and use of disability employment research. NIDILRR research is expected to be “disseminated or distributed effectively” so as to ultimately “enhance the ability of people with disabilities to achieve inclusion and integration into society.”
NIDILRR believes that the new knowledge and resulting informational products must be presented in ways that make it accessible to and feasible for the intended users. However, despite KT expert advice to carefully match the dissemination modality to the intended user; there is limited guidance provided by research on which modality is most effective with which stakeholder group. The result is that NIDILRR grantees cannot strategically plan KT informational products. To address this gap in knowledge, KT2-R will use comparative effective research methods to conduct a rigorous test of the relative reach and engagement of three commonly used dissemination modalities among samples of people with disabilities and policymakers. Additionally, a survey will explore the perceived utility of the different products.
