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• How to Write Recommendations in Research | Examples & Tips

How to Write Recommendations in Research | Examples & Tips

Published on 15 September 2022 by Tegan George .

Recommendations in research are a crucial component of your discussion section and the conclusion of your thesis , dissertation , or research paper .

As you conduct your research and analyse the data you collected , perhaps there are ideas or results that don’t quite fit the scope of your research topic . Or, maybe your results suggest that there are further implications of your results or the causal relationships between previously-studied variables than covered in extant research.

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Table of contents

What should recommendations look like, building your research recommendation, how should your recommendations be written, recommendation in research example, frequently asked questions about recommendations.

Recommendations for future research should be:

• Concrete and specific
• Supported with a clear rationale
• Directly connected to your research

Overall, strive to highlight ways other researchers can reproduce or replicate your results to draw further conclusions, and suggest different directions that future research can take, if applicable.

Relatedly, when making these recommendations, avoid:

• Undermining your own work, but rather offer suggestions on how future studies can build upon it
• Suggesting recommendations actually needed to complete your argument, but rather ensure that your research stands alone on its own merits
• Using recommendations as a place for self-criticism, but rather as a natural extension point for your work

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There are many different ways to frame recommendations, but the easiest is perhaps to follow the formula of research question   conclusion  recommendation. Here’s an example.

Conclusion An important condition for controlling many social skills is mastering language. If children have a better command of language, they can express themselves better and are better able to understand their peers. Opportunities to practice social skills are thus dependent on the development of language skills.

As a rule of thumb, try to limit yourself to only the most relevant future recommendations: ones that stem directly from your work. While you can have multiple recommendations for each research conclusion, it is also acceptable to have one recommendation that is connected to more than one conclusion.

These recommendations should be targeted at your audience, specifically toward peers or colleagues in your field that work on similar topics to yours. They can flow directly from any limitations you found while conducting your work, offering concrete and actionable possibilities for how future research can build on anything that your own work was unable to address at the time of your writing.

See below for a full research recommendation example that you can use as a template to write your own.

The current study can be interpreted as a first step in the research on COPD speech characteristics. However, the results of this study should be treated with caution due to the small sample size and the lack of details regarding the participants’ characteristics.

Future research could further examine the differences in speech characteristics between exacerbated COPD patients, stable COPD patients, and healthy controls. It could also contribute to a deeper understanding of the acoustic measurements suitable for e-health measurements.

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While it may be tempting to present new arguments or evidence in your thesis or disseration conclusion , especially if you have a particularly striking argument you’d like to finish your analysis with, you shouldn’t. Theses and dissertations follow a more formal structure than this.

All your findings and arguments should be presented in the body of the text (more specifically in the discussion section and results section .) The conclusion is meant to summarize and reflect on the evidence and arguments you have already presented, not introduce new ones.

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation should include the following:

• A restatement of your research question
• A summary of your key arguments and/or results
• A short discussion of the implications of your research

For a stronger dissertation conclusion , avoid including:

• Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion…”)
• Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g. “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Your conclusion should leave the reader with a strong, decisive impression of your work.

In a thesis or dissertation, the discussion is an in-depth exploration of the results, going into detail about the meaning of your findings and citing relevant sources to put them in context.

The conclusion is more shorter and more general: it concisely answers your main research question and makes recommendations based on your overall findings.

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George, T. (2022, September 15). How to Write Recommendations in Research | Examples & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved 14 May 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/research-recommendations/

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Recommendations in your thesis

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When should you give recommendations?

Where do you place recommendations in your thesis, recommendations vs. conclusions, examples of thesis recommendations, what criteria should good recommendations meet, implementing the recommendations from your thesis, have you overlooked anything in your thesis.

Are you writing your thesis for a client? Then it is common to present recommendations at the end of your thesis. These are possible solutions or measures with which the client can solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. Of course, your recommendations must be applicable and thus meet several conditions. 

Usually, you give recommendations when you write your thesis for a client. In general, recommendations are common if your research question aims to solve a problem. Is your research more descriptive or explanatory? Then recommendations are not always necessary. 

Even if you are not writing your thesis for a client, you can make recommendations. For example, these could be recommendations for a broad professional group or certain bodies. 

It is common to include the recommendations in a separate chapter that follows the conclusion and discussion. Sometimes you dedicate a separate advisory report to the recommendations. Usually, you will receive guidelines for this from your educational institution or the client. 

The recommendations in your thesis are not formulated out of thin air. They are based on the conclusions you have drawn from your research. You must substantiate each recommendation. Briefly state why you think this particular measure will yield results. Furthermore, state the result you expect from it.

Since your recommendations derive from your conclusions, there is no need to refer to sources again in the justification for your recommendations.

Suppose you have done research for a meat substitute manufacturer. You have researched on their behalf how flexitarians view this brand's current product range. The problem the client is facing is that they are not reaching enough flexitarians and want to sell more products to this target group. Your research shows that in some respects the product offering does not match what flexitarians are looking for.

Your recommendation could then be, for example:

It is recommended that brand X develops more products that resemble the texture of meat. After all, this is what flexitarians are looking for in the supermarket and competitors offer only a limited range for this. Thus, it is here that there are opportunities for brand X to increase their reach and sales among flexitarians. 

It is important that your recommendations are executable in several ways:

The recommendations should fit within the available budget. 

The recommendations must contribute to the outcome envisioned by the client. 

Your recommendations should not violate any laws or regulations. 

The recommendations must fit into the client's schedule. 

Your recommendations should be concrete. The client needs to know exactly what to do. 

Discuss the prerequisites with your client beforehand. Then you will know what requirements the recommendations in your thesis have to meet. Does your client not mention any requirements? Then you are free in how you formulate them,as long as they are realistic. 

Ideally, your client will choose to implement the recommendations from your thesis. In other words, the client will want to put your recommendations into practice. Is it already certain that your client will do that? Then you can write an implementation plan. In it, you describe step by step how the client can implement your solution. 

Besides the recommendations, your thesis consists of many other parts. Want to make sure you haven’t overlooked anything? Check out our information on the thesis structure . Here, you will find links to all our articles on the various thesis components. 

Research Recommendations – Guiding policy-makers for evidence-based decision making

Research recommendations play a crucial role in guiding scholars and researchers toward fruitful avenues of exploration. In an era marked by rapid technological advancements and an ever-expanding knowledge base, refining the process of generating research recommendations becomes imperative.

But, what is a research recommendation?

Research recommendations are suggestions or advice provided to researchers to guide their study on a specific topic . They are typically given by experts in the field. Research recommendations are more action-oriented and provide specific guidance for decision-makers, unlike implications that are broader and focus on the broader significance and consequences of the research findings. However, both are crucial components of a research study.

Difference Between Research Recommendations and Implication

Although research recommendations and implications are distinct components of a research study, they are closely related. The differences between them are as follows:

Types of Research Recommendations

Recommendations in research can take various forms, which are as follows:

These recommendations aim to assist researchers in navigating the vast landscape of academic knowledge.

Let us dive deeper to know about its key components and the steps to write an impactful research recommendation.

Key Components of Research Recommendations

The key components of research recommendations include defining the research question or objective, specifying research methods, outlining data collection and analysis processes, presenting results and conclusions, addressing limitations, and suggesting areas for future research. Here are some characteristics of research recommendations:

Research recommendations offer various advantages and play a crucial role in ensuring that research findings contribute to positive outcomes in various fields. However, they also have few limitations which highlights the significance of a well-crafted research recommendation in offering the promised advantages.

The importance of research recommendations ranges in various fields, influencing policy-making, program development, product development, marketing strategies, medical practice, and scientific research. Their purpose is to transfer knowledge from researchers to practitioners, policymakers, or stakeholders, facilitating informed decision-making and improving outcomes in different domains.

How to Write Research Recommendations?

Research recommendations can be generated through various means, including algorithmic approaches, expert opinions, or collaborative filtering techniques. Here is a step-wise guide to build your understanding on the development of research recommendations.

1. Understand the Research Question:

Understand the research question and objectives before writing recommendations. Also, ensure that your recommendations are relevant and directly address the goals of the study.

2. Review Existing Literature:

Familiarize yourself with relevant existing literature to help you identify gaps , and offer informed recommendations that contribute to the existing body of research.

3. Consider Research Methods:

Evaluate the appropriateness of different research methods in addressing the research question. Also, consider the nature of the data, the study design, and the specific objectives.

4. Identify Data Collection Techniques:

Gather dataset from diverse authentic sources. Include information such as keywords, abstracts, authors, publication dates, and citation metrics to provide a rich foundation for analysis.

5. Propose Data Analysis Methods:

Suggest appropriate data analysis methods based on the type of data collected. Consider whether statistical analysis, qualitative analysis, or a mixed-methods approach is most suitable.

6. Consider Limitations and Ethical Considerations:

Acknowledge any limitations and potential ethical considerations of the study. Furthermore, address these limitations or mitigate ethical concerns to ensure responsible research.

7. Justify Recommendations:

Explain how your recommendation contributes to addressing the research question or objective. Provide a strong rationale to help researchers understand the importance of following your suggestions.

8. Summarize Recommendations:

Provide a concise summary at the end of the report to emphasize how following these recommendations will contribute to the overall success of the research project.

By following these steps, you can create research recommendations that are actionable and contribute meaningfully to the success of the research project.

Download now to unlock some tips to improve your journey of writing research recommendations.

Example of a Research Recommendation

Here is an example of a research recommendation based on a hypothetical research to improve your understanding.

Research Recommendation: Enhancing Student Learning through Integrated Learning Platforms

Background:

The research study investigated the impact of an integrated learning platform on student learning outcomes in high school mathematics classes. The findings revealed a statistically significant improvement in student performance and engagement when compared to traditional teaching methods.

Recommendation:

In light of the research findings, it is recommended that educational institutions consider adopting and integrating the identified learning platform into their mathematics curriculum. The following specific recommendations are provided:

• Implementation of the Integrated Learning Platform:

Schools are encouraged to adopt the integrated learning platform in mathematics classrooms, ensuring proper training for teachers on its effective utilization.

• Professional Development for Educators:

Develop and implement professional programs to train educators in the effective use of the integrated learning platform to address any challenges teachers may face during the transition.

• Monitoring and Evaluation:

Establish a monitoring and evaluation system to track the impact of the integrated learning platform on student performance over time.

• Resource Allocation:

Allocate sufficient resources, both financial and technical, to support the widespread implementation of the integrated learning platform.

By implementing these recommendations, educational institutions can harness the potential of the integrated learning platform and enhance student learning experiences and academic achievements in mathematics.

This example covers the components of a research recommendation, providing specific actions based on the research findings, identifying the target audience, and outlining practical steps for implementation.

Using AI in Research Recommendation Writing

Enhancing research recommendations is an ongoing endeavor that requires the integration of cutting-edge technologies, collaborative efforts, and ethical considerations. By embracing data-driven approaches and leveraging advanced technologies, the research community can create more effective and personalized recommendation systems. However, it is accompanied by several limitations. Therefore, it is essential to approach the use of AI in research with a critical mindset, and complement its capabilities with human expertise and judgment.

Here are some limitations of integrating AI in writing research recommendation and some ways on how to counter them.

1. Data Bias

AI systems rely heavily on data for training. If the training data is biased or incomplete, the AI model may produce biased results or recommendations.

How to tackle: Audit regularly the model’s performance to identify any discrepancies and adjust the training data and algorithms accordingly.

2. Lack of Understanding of Context:

AI models may struggle to understand the nuanced context of a particular research problem. They may misinterpret information, leading to inaccurate recommendations.

How to tackle: Use AI to characterize research articles and topics. Employ them to extract features like keywords, authorship patterns and content-based details.

3. Ethical Considerations:

AI models might stereotype certain concepts or generate recommendations that could have negative consequences for certain individuals or groups.

How to tackle: Incorporate user feedback mechanisms to reduce redundancies. Establish an ethics review process for AI models in research recommendation writing.

4. Lack of Creativity and Intuition:

AI may struggle with tasks that require a deep understanding of the underlying principles or the ability to think outside the box.

How to tackle: Hybrid approaches can be employed by integrating AI in data analysis and identifying patterns for accelerating the data interpretation process.

5. Interpretability:

Many AI models, especially complex deep learning models, lack transparency on how the model arrived at a particular recommendation.

How to tackle: Implement models like decision trees or linear models. Provide clear explanation of the model architecture, training process, and decision-making criteria.

6. Dynamic Nature of Research:

Research fields are dynamic, and new information is constantly emerging. AI models may struggle to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape and may not be able to adapt to new developments.

How to tackle: Establish a feedback loop for continuous improvement. Regularly update the recommendation system based on user feedback and emerging research trends.

The integration of AI in research recommendation writing holds great promise for advancing knowledge and streamlining the research process. However, navigating these concerns is pivotal in ensuring the responsible deployment of these technologies. Researchers need to understand the use of responsible use of AI in research and must be aware of the ethical considerations.

Exploring research recommendations plays a critical role in shaping the trajectory of scientific inquiry. It serves as a compass, guiding researchers toward more robust methodologies, collaborative endeavors, and innovative approaches. Embracing these suggestions not only enhances the quality of individual studies but also contributes to the collective advancement of human understanding.

Frequently Asked Questions

The purpose of recommendations in research is to provide practical and actionable suggestions based on the study's findings, guiding future actions, policies, or interventions in a specific field or context. Recommendations bridges the gap between research outcomes and their real-world application.

To make a research recommendation, analyze your findings, identify key insights, and propose specific, evidence-based actions. Include the relevance of the recommendations to the study's objectives and provide practical steps for implementation.

Begin a recommendation by succinctly summarizing the key findings of the research. Clearly state the purpose of the recommendation and its intended impact. Use a direct and actionable language to convey the suggested course of action.

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Home » Research Recommendations – Examples and Writing Guide

Research Recommendations – Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Recommendations

Definition:

Research recommendations refer to suggestions or advice given to someone who is looking to conduct research on a specific topic or area. These recommendations may include suggestions for research methods, data collection techniques, sources of information, and other factors that can help to ensure that the research is conducted in a rigorous and effective manner. Research recommendations may be provided by experts in the field, such as professors, researchers, or consultants, and are intended to help guide the researcher towards the most appropriate and effective approach to their research project.

Parts of Research Recommendations

Research recommendations can vary depending on the specific project or area of research, but typically they will include some or all of the following parts:

• Research question or objective : This is the overarching goal or purpose of the research project.
• Research methods : This includes the specific techniques and strategies that will be used to collect and analyze data. The methods will depend on the research question and the type of data being collected.
• Data collection: This refers to the process of gathering information or data that will be used to answer the research question. This can involve a range of different methods, including surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments.
• Data analysis : This involves the process of examining and interpreting the data that has been collected. This can involve statistical analysis, qualitative analysis, or a combination of both.
• Results and conclusions: This section summarizes the findings of the research and presents any conclusions or recommendations based on those findings.
• Limitations and future research: This section discusses any limitations of the study and suggests areas for future research that could build on the findings of the current project.

How to Write Research Recommendations

Writing research recommendations involves providing specific suggestions or advice to a researcher on how to conduct their study. Here are some steps to consider when writing research recommendations:

• Understand the research question: Before writing research recommendations, it is important to have a clear understanding of the research question and the objectives of the study. This will help to ensure that the recommendations are relevant and appropriate.
• Consider the research methods: Consider the most appropriate research methods that could be used to collect and analyze data that will address the research question. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the different methods and how they might apply to the specific research question.
• Provide specific recommendations: Provide specific and actionable recommendations that the researcher can implement in their study. This can include recommendations related to sample size, data collection techniques, research instruments, data analysis methods, or other relevant factors.
• Justify recommendations : Justify why each recommendation is being made and how it will help to address the research question or objective. It is important to provide a clear rationale for each recommendation to help the researcher understand why it is important.
• Consider limitations and ethical considerations : Consider any limitations or potential ethical considerations that may arise in conducting the research. Provide recommendations for addressing these issues or mitigating their impact.
• Summarize recommendations: Provide a summary of the recommendations at the end of the report or document, highlighting the most important points and emphasizing how the recommendations will contribute to the overall success of the research project.

Example of Research Recommendations

Example of Research Recommendations sample for students:

• Further investigate the effects of X on Y by conducting a larger-scale randomized controlled trial with a diverse population.
• Explore the relationship between A and B by conducting qualitative interviews with individuals who have experience with both.
• Investigate the long-term effects of intervention C by conducting a follow-up study with participants one year after completion.
• Examine the effectiveness of intervention D in a real-world setting by conducting a field study in a naturalistic environment.
• Compare and contrast the results of this study with those of previous research on the same topic to identify any discrepancies or inconsistencies in the findings.
• Expand upon the limitations of this study by addressing potential confounding variables and conducting further analyses to control for them.
• Investigate the relationship between E and F by conducting a meta-analysis of existing literature on the topic.
• Explore the potential moderating effects of variable G on the relationship between H and I by conducting subgroup analyses.
• Identify potential areas for future research based on the gaps in current literature and the findings of this study.
• Conduct a replication study to validate the results of this study and further establish the generalizability of the findings.

Applications of Research Recommendations

Research recommendations are important as they provide guidance on how to improve or solve a problem. The applications of research recommendations are numerous and can be used in various fields. Some of the applications of research recommendations include:

• Policy-making: Research recommendations can be used to develop policies that address specific issues. For example, recommendations from research on climate change can be used to develop policies that reduce carbon emissions and promote sustainability.
• Program development: Research recommendations can guide the development of programs that address specific issues. For example, recommendations from research on education can be used to develop programs that improve student achievement.
• Product development : Research recommendations can guide the development of products that meet specific needs. For example, recommendations from research on consumer behavior can be used to develop products that appeal to consumers.
• Marketing strategies: Research recommendations can be used to develop effective marketing strategies. For example, recommendations from research on target audiences can be used to develop marketing strategies that effectively reach specific demographic groups.
• Medical practice : Research recommendations can guide medical practitioners in providing the best possible care to patients. For example, recommendations from research on treatments for specific conditions can be used to improve patient outcomes.
• Scientific research: Research recommendations can guide future research in a specific field. For example, recommendations from research on a specific disease can be used to guide future research on treatments and cures for that disease.

Purpose of Research Recommendations

The purpose of research recommendations is to provide guidance on how to improve or solve a problem based on the findings of research. Research recommendations are typically made at the end of a research study and are based on the conclusions drawn from the research data. The purpose of research recommendations is to provide actionable advice to individuals or organizations that can help them make informed decisions, develop effective strategies, or implement changes that address the issues identified in the research.

The main purpose of research recommendations is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from researchers to practitioners, policymakers, or other stakeholders who can benefit from the research findings. Recommendations can help bridge the gap between research and practice by providing specific actions that can be taken based on the research results. By providing clear and actionable recommendations, researchers can help ensure that their findings are put into practice, leading to improvements in various fields, such as healthcare, education, business, and public policy.

Characteristics of Research Recommendations

Research recommendations are a key component of research studies and are intended to provide practical guidance on how to apply research findings to real-world problems. The following are some of the key characteristics of research recommendations:

• Actionable : Research recommendations should be specific and actionable, providing clear guidance on what actions should be taken to address the problem identified in the research.
• Evidence-based: Research recommendations should be based on the findings of the research study, supported by the data collected and analyzed.
• Contextual: Research recommendations should be tailored to the specific context in which they will be implemented, taking into account the unique circumstances and constraints of the situation.
• Feasible : Research recommendations should be realistic and feasible, taking into account the available resources, time constraints, and other factors that may impact their implementation.
• Prioritized: Research recommendations should be prioritized based on their potential impact and feasibility, with the most important recommendations given the highest priority.
• Communicated effectively: Research recommendations should be communicated clearly and effectively, using language that is understandable to the target audience.
• Evaluated : Research recommendations should be evaluated to determine their effectiveness in addressing the problem identified in the research, and to identify opportunities for improvement.

Advantages of Research Recommendations

Research recommendations have several advantages, including:

• Providing practical guidance: Research recommendations provide practical guidance on how to apply research findings to real-world problems, helping to bridge the gap between research and practice.
• Improving decision-making: Research recommendations help decision-makers make informed decisions based on the findings of research, leading to better outcomes and improved performance.
• Enhancing accountability : Research recommendations can help enhance accountability by providing clear guidance on what actions should be taken, and by providing a basis for evaluating progress and outcomes.
• Informing policy development : Research recommendations can inform the development of policies that are evidence-based and tailored to the specific needs of a given situation.
• Enhancing knowledge transfer: Research recommendations help facilitate the transfer of knowledge from researchers to practitioners, policymakers, or other stakeholders who can benefit from the research findings.
• Encouraging further research : Research recommendations can help identify gaps in knowledge and areas for further research, encouraging continued exploration and discovery.
• Promoting innovation: Research recommendations can help identify innovative solutions to complex problems, leading to new ideas and approaches.

Limitations of Research Recommendations

While research recommendations have several advantages, there are also some limitations to consider. These limitations include:

• Context-specific: Research recommendations may be context-specific and may not be applicable in all situations. Recommendations developed in one context may not be suitable for another context, requiring adaptation or modification.
• I mplementation challenges: Implementation of research recommendations may face challenges, such as lack of resources, resistance to change, or lack of buy-in from stakeholders.
• Limited scope: Research recommendations may be limited in scope, focusing only on a specific issue or aspect of a problem, while other important factors may be overlooked.
• Uncertainty : Research recommendations may be uncertain, particularly when the research findings are inconclusive or when the recommendations are based on limited data.
• Bias : Research recommendations may be influenced by researcher bias or conflicts of interest, leading to recommendations that are not in the best interests of stakeholders.
• Timing : Research recommendations may be time-sensitive, requiring timely action to be effective. Delayed action may result in missed opportunities or reduced effectiveness.
• Lack of evaluation: Research recommendations may not be evaluated to determine their effectiveness or impact, making it difficult to assess whether they are successful or not.

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Spurring Innovation in Food and Agriculture: A Review of the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Program (2014)

Chapter: 6 conclusions and recommendations.

6 Conclusions and Recommendations

At the beginning of its review process, the committee considered the importance of a national research program specifically targeted to the food and agriculture sector. It asked many questions, including these: What is the unique role, if any, of publicly funded agricultural research? How critical have research and development (R&D) been for increasing and maintaining the productivity and sustainability of the nation’s agriculture and food sectors? How does the United States compare with other nations in R&D investment in those sectors, and is this investment sufficient for generating the productivity growth and agricultural knowledge that are needed to meet projected needs? Those questions and others helped to set the context for addressing elements of the committee’s Statement of Task (see Chapter 1 , Box 1-1 ) that focused on assessing the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). The committee was mindful of the authorizing language in the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (known as the 2008 Farm Bill), which defined the goals and priorities of the AFRI program. The Agricultural Act of 2014 (known as the 2014 Farm Bill) was passed as the committee was completing its report but did not change AFRI’s authority substantively despite including some changes in AFRI activities.

The preceding chapters have concentrated on specific elements of the committee’s Statement of Task, many of which concern AFRI program functionality and effectiveness. They each outline findings that address specific questions that are included in the Statement of Task. Taken together, these questions led the committee to a broader discussion about AFRI’s importance and about what AFRI needs if it is to succeed as the major competitive grants program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture

(USDA). In keeping with the charge to evaluate AFRI, the present chapter provides overarching conclusions and recommendations that resulted from that broader discussion.

NEED FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE RESEARCH

U.S. public investment in food and agricultural R&D has contributed substantially, both domestically and internationally, to the public good. The 2012 Report to the President on Agricultural Preparedness and the Agriculture Research Enterprise by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST, 2012) independently recognized the value of that investment, the importance of competitive grants to ensure the highest-quality R&D effort, and the growing mismatch between the magnitude of the investment used to fulfill the promise of contemporary scientific opportunities versus the magnitude of investment needed to meet present and projected domestic and global needs in food and agriculture. For instance, the needs of 9.6 billion people by 2050 (World Resources Institute, 2013) and the last decade’s steady decline in the U.S. relative share of global agriculture and food system R&D are in sharp contrast with the nation’s more appropriate response to opportunities in the biomedical and other basic sciences—a response that has produced substantial public-health benefit. Similarly, investment in defense-related research has led to remarkable returns, for example, in information technologies.

AFRI was created with the ambition of using the nation’s most creative minds in research, education, and extension to address issues fundamental to human and social well-being. However, continued weakness in the public commitment to food and agricultural R&D is likely to lead to a steady decline in global competitiveness of U.S. food and agriculture production and an inability to respond adequately to health, sustainability, and environmental challenges in this important sector.

CONCLUSION 1: AFRI plays a critical and unique role in the nation’s overall R&D portfolio because its mandated scope, mission, and responsibilities are focused on the most important national and international challenges facing food and agriculture. But it has not been given the adequate resources needed to meet contemporary and likely future challenges. Congress established AFRI to manage and carry out research that would address complex national and multistate issues in agriculture and food. The scope, intensity, complexity, and urgency of those issues have been increasing, and demands on AFRI exceed what can reasonably be expected given AFRI’s recent funding levels. When AFRI was launched in 2008,

the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) made program management decisions on the basis of an assumption that appropriations would grow to authorized levels over the next several years. That assumption was not borne out, and many multiyear grants encumbered future years’ appropriations. Although AFRI funding is growing, it has still not reached authorized levels.

RECOMMENDATION 1: The United States should strengthen its public investment in competitive agricultural R&D to ensure that it continues its role of a global leader in the innovations and technologies that are needed to promote health and well-being and to feed growing worldwide populations sustainably. AFRI’s prospects for success in meeting stated goals and outcomes would improve if its funding and other support elements (such as reporting structures and monitoring abilities) were commensurate with the program’s legislatively mandated scope.

REALIGNMENT OF PROGRAM STRUCTURE TO MATCH MISSION, MANDATE, AND BUDGET

When the 2008 Farm Bill replaced the National Research Initiative (NRI) with AFRI to “make competitive grants for fundamental and applied research, extension, and education to address food and agricultural sciences” (see Appendix C ), the scientific community envisioned AFRI as USDA’s opportunity to create a scientific grants agency for food and agriculture that would be equivalent in scope and stature to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The 2008 Farm Bill established six priorities for AFRI: plant health and production and plant products; animal health and production and animal products; food safety, nutrition, and health; renewable energy, natural resources, and environment; agriculture systems and technology; and agriculture economics and rural communities. Those priorities formed the basis of AFRI’s Foundational Program.

In attempting to understand AFRI’s mission and structure, the committee requested a NIFA organization chart of units that were affiliated with AFRI and a diagram that showed AFRI’s program structure. After several rounds of correspondence, it remained unclear to the committee how NIFA viewed AFRI’s mission, how AFRI was structured, and who had direct reporting responsibilities for grant administration. The committee therefore assumed that AFRI’s mission was to follow the 2008 Farm Bill’s authorizing language. Later communications with NIFA provided a more explicit basis for understanding AFRI’s program structure. The committee determined

that AFRI maintains two program areas (challenge and foundational), five challenge priority areas (childhood-obesity prevention, climate change, global food security, food safety, and sustainable bioenergy), six foundation priority areas (plant health and production and plant products; animal health and production and animal products; food safety, nutrition, and health; renewable energy, natural resources, and environment; agriculture systems and technology; and agriculture economics and rural communities), and five grant types (standard project, coordinated agricultural project, planning and coordination, conference, and food and agricultural science enhancement). The committee concluded that the structure was unnecessarily complex.

The USDA competitive grants program was restructured in 2010. As part of the restructuring, NIFA established a new AFRI grant category that was intended to attract a wide array of disciplines and expertise to successfully address the most demanding, complex issues in food and agriculture. The challenge-area program was based on a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving. NIFA used the societal topic categories outlined in the National Research Council’s New Biology report (NRC, 2009) as a basis for identifying childhood-obesity prevention, climate change, global food security, food safety, and sustainable bioenergy as its challenge areas. It also established a multiyear, large-scale Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP) grants program funded by substantial investments to address key societal concerns—an approach that USDA had previously taken with only a handful of NRI grants. This high-stakes, potentially high-rewards approach for bringing about grand solutions and the impetus for moving the approach forward were based on the assumption that funding would reach authorization levels outlined in the 2008 Farm Bill.

The goal of AFRI’s new challenge-area program is worthy—it answers previous demands for incorporating multidisciplinary approaches to complex, pressing issues, and it brings resources to bear on high-profile problems. But the size of AFRI’s budget does not allow a reasonable prospect of satisfying its congressional mandate to focus research on the six discipline areas of the 2008 Farm Bill (those areas remained the same for the 2014 Farm Bill) while adopting an ambitious grand-challenges research approach as other agencies have done, such as NSF and NIH. CAP grants have consumed an exceptionally large portion of AFRI’s annual appropriations. Meeting the multiyear commitments has reduced the funds available for smaller-scale, more traditional, investigator-initiated grants—a development that, not surprisingly, is associated with a reduction in the number of applicants for AFRI grants relative to AFRI’s predecessor (see Figure 3-3 ). Emphasis on CAP grants and challenge areas has coincided with a growing year-to-year inconsistency in AFRI’s project portfolio (see Appendix F ), which is unsustainable in itself and insufficient if the various legislative

mandates are to be satisfied. Such inconsistency may be one explanation for the absolute decline in AFRI grant applications. The diversion of a large proportion of resources to CAP grants and challenge areas has impaired the flexibility needed to address emergent issues.

CONCLUSION 2: AFRI is unnecessarily complex, difficult to depict clearly, and characterized by overlapping components that do not clearly align with priorities identified in authorizing legislation. Program complexity impedes the measurement of progress relative to clear goals. The multiplicity of grant types, each with its own priorities that change from year to year, contributes to a sense of programmatic inconsistency and unpredictability. Proliferation of priority areas also has resulted in AFRI’s inability to satisfy its congressional mandates.

RECOMMENDATION 2: NIFA should simplify the AFRI program structure by realigning it to more clearly address its specific mission and mandates as defined in authorizing legislation. Simplification of program structure to focus on the six foundation priority areas would improve efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency.

Rebalancing the Portfolio

AFRI’s ambitious portfolio of multiple grant types is undercutting its mission to support fundamental research, which generates critical knowledge and tools for future applications. Federal support is essential to increase the storehouse of fundamental knowledge, and AFRI will need to solicit and fund applications that advance basic agricultural sciences. The 2008 Farm Bill specifies that grant funding for fundamental research should amount to 60% of the AFRI portfolio, with the remaining 40% for applied research. With a large proportion of AFRI’s budget dedicated to addressing grand challenges, the focus of the program has shifted toward applied science at the expense of fundamental research. Given its limited budget, if AFRI continues with that approach, the scientific workforce available to conduct fundamental research in the agricultural and food sciences may continue to diminish.

Conclusion 2-A: Fundamental research is critical to provide the knowledge base upon which future discoveries will be made, and expanding the stock of fundamental knowledge is AFRI’s primary purpose. The balance of fundamental and applied research, however, has shifted toward the applied, with extension and education components mainly

included as supporting elements of research grants. Projects whose principal aim is the development of fundamental innovations in research, education, and extension receive less funding. The request-for-application (RFA) topics specified for foundational grants are increasingly narrow in scope and weighted toward applied research. NIFA will need to rebalance the AFRI portfolio toward the proportions described in the 2008 Farm Bill and broaden its foundational grants areas to encourage investigator-initiated applications in basic science.

Recommendation 2-A: To realign AFRI’s portfolio with its legislative mandate, NIFA should renew its priority for fundamental research. That should include an emphasis on proposals that will generate fundamental knowledge to support novel technologies, provide platforms for extension and education, and educate the next generation of food and agricultural scientists. Basic research on topics in the six priority areas will be more effectively communicated to users and students if there is more research conducted directly on extension or educational processes, such as training on the use of new technology, and if there are additional educational programs. Less than 11% of AFRI funding is dedicated to extension and education (see Table 4-1 ). New grants are needed that are specific to extension and education in order to effectively communicate the research community’s findings to user communities, enabling AFRI’s fundamental and applied research to become better integrated and knowledge transfer to be more efficient in classroom and field settings.

The Challenge-Area Program

Conclusion 2-B: The current AFRI challenge areas are narrowly focused on specific issues, and the challenge and foundation priority areas are unnecessarily redundant. The challenge areas are focused on five societal challenges determined by NIFA, and the foundation priority areas follow the six outlined priorities that are authorized in the 2008 Farm Bill. The challenge areas are prescriptive and focus on specific problems of interest (such as climate change), which were predetermined at the inception of the program in 2010. For that reason, the challenge areas have been perceived by the committee and the scientific community as lacking flexibility to address newly emerging problems and to incorporate rapid advances in science and technology. That is in contrast with the foundation priority areas (such as plant health and production and plant products) that are categorized by disciplines that span food and agriculture.

Recommendation 2-B: As part of its realignment, AFRI should be simplified by eliminating the challenge-area program, and areas of research within the foundational program should be primarily investigator driven. Rather than dividing resources among two categories of programs (challenge and foundational), NIFA could focus its resources on one program (the foundational program). Redirection of resources to the foundational program, whose priority areas directly reflect priorities aligned with the 2008 Farm Bill, would enable AFRI to address more clearly the six congressionally mandated priorities. The six priority areas are broad enough to allow investigators, teams, and institutions to develop innovative projects that address current and expected needs in food and agriculture (including topics that are the focus of the challenge-area program) and to incorporate advances in science and technology in a timely manner. Such a realignment would enable AFRI to fund the most innovative investigator-driven projects and enable NIFA to take full advantage of the intellectual resources in the U.S. scientific community. Multidisciplinary approaches, championed by the current challenge-area program, are critical for successfully addressing many of the challenges in food and agriculture that the AFRI program is expected to address. Such multidisciplinary approaches, where appropriate, can and should be incorporated into the foundational program.

The Decline in Applicants, Awardees, and Trainees

Conclusion 2-C: The recent decline in the numbers of applicants, awardees, and trainees is a disturbing trend. It raises questions: Are scientists “following the money” and moving away from agricultural research? Are young scientists not being trained in agriculture? Young scientists are trained by principal investigators (PIs) who have grant funds to equip their laboratories and to mentor students and postdoctoral scholars. On the basis of the committee’s review of the number of graduate students and postdoctoral trainees supported by AFRI grants, it appears that students are increasingly being trained with funds from other federal agencies that have larger budgets. If sufficient competitive research funds are not available in agriculture for funding research and for training young scientists, researchers will seek out a larger portion of their overall support from agencies whose missions are not directly aligned with the food and agriculture sectors. In the long term, food and agriculture will lose talent to other fields of study that have stronger support.

Recommendation 2-C: AFRI should carefully examine the causes of the decline in the numbers of applicants, awardees, and trainees and adjust its grant programs to ensure that future generations of young scientists are not lost inadvertently from food and agriculture R&D because of funding policies.

Coordinated Agricultural Project Grants

Conclusion 2-D: The current AFRI appropriation cannot sustainably support the current policy of investing a disproportionate percentage of the AFRI budget on large CAP awards and simultaneously sustain a credible program of foundational, training, and Food and Agricultural Science Enhancement grants. The shift to funding fewer, higher-amount, and longer-term CAP grants also appears to have resulted in the early decreased output of scholarly products per dollar of AFRI funds invested. Adjusting for the time since project initiation, there is evidence that the large project scope and complexity of these grants have resulted in fewer scholarly products (publications, papers, and presentations) per fixed amount of funding than was the case with less complex, smaller grants. High intraproject management and transaction costs required for very large projects have likely contributed to this phenomenon. The finding applies to large AFRI grants generally but especially to CAP grants. Early output data suggest that reducing the average project’s scale and scope (represented by budget and number of PIs, respectively) would improve the output of scholarly products, at least in early phases. The committee is not saying that large grants are inappropriate, only that its early analyses show that as the scale of grants rises, the marginal output of published papers falls over the period that was examined. The committee recognizes that high transaction costs may in some projects be more than offset by the importance of the contributions in addressing the targeted problems (e.g., multi- and transdisciplinary collaboration in the broad research community).

Recommendation 2-D: AFRI should consider eliminating CAP grants as a grant category and committing more resources to other grant types. A grant’s multi-investigator structure should be driven by its underlying science. Unless the net benefits of larger, complex projects can be objectively demonstrated or AFRI’s budget is increased substantially, AFRI should consider reducing the proportion of its assets that is devoted to very large projects and instead emphasize a greater simplicity of function and PI structure. NIFA should continue to encourage multi-institution and multi-investigator grants as part of AFRI’s foundational

program and request that PIs develop budgets and project personnel that are commensurate with the proposed level of effort. Such large-scale proposals should be required to demonstrate how grant administration and transaction costs will be commensurate with the proposed effort. Because developing a multifunction, multi-institutional grant entails a large investment of time and planning, a staged development process (e.g., a planning-grant program) for large grants should be considered.

STRATEGY AND COLLABORATION

AFRI’s research, extension, and education portfolio is appropriately targeted to meeting the nation’s food and agricultural needs. However, its success depends on the generation of fundamental knowledge and the flow of new knowledge generated by other federally funded and private-sector research. AFRI can maximize its impact and resources by collaborating with other federal agencies and by strategically aligning its research with congressional mandates that target the highest-priority needs of the food and agriculture sectors.

CONCLUSION 3: AFRI does not have clearly articulated plans to guide its priority setting, management processes, and interagency collaboration. To evaluate AFRI’s success it is critical to define goals and outcomes and thus enable the assessment of progress in meeting them. NIFA provided the committee with several documents that described a roadmap explaining how the challenge areas were developed to take into consideration the societal challenges outlined in the National Research Council New Biology report (NRC, 2009) and pointed to individual RFAs for specific goals in each of the priority areas. But it did not provide a statement of overall goals, time frames for meeting them, or planned outcomes for assessing progress. For the purpose of the present review the committee assumed that the goals of AFRI were synonymous with those stated in the 2008 Farm Bill which were unchanged in the 2014 Farm Bill.

RECOMMENDATION 3: AFRI should develop a strategic plan that identifies priorities for its overall program goals for meeting them and a framework for assessing the program’s progress. Such a plan is critical for providing program continuity, consistency, and predictability. A strategic plan would include a clear vision

statement and strategies for implementing priorities. To develop a strategic plan NIFA could revisit the intent of AFRI and broadly define acceptable topics so that AFRI programs can achieve greater flexibility. The plan could include less restrictive RFAs for which PIs can propose unconventional ideas and take more flexible approaches to the six broad priority areas mandated by the 2008 and 2014 Farm Bills.

Interagency Collaboration

Conclusion 3-A: Interagency efforts directed at food and agriculture need to be more strategic, more robust, and better coordinated across federal agencies. Several other federal agencies—such as NSF, NIH, and the Department of Energy (DOE)—provide grants and conduct research in subjects tangentially related to food and agriculture, but USDA is the only federal agency whose mission is aimed directly at food and agriculture. To further USDA’s mission and to leverage the efforts of sister agencies, USDA will need to take on a greater leadership role in coordinating research efforts across agencies.

Recommendation 3-A: NIFA and USDA should lead interagency efforts to effectively coordinate and collaborate across agencies on food and agricultural research. NIFA has been successful in collaborating with NSF, NIH, DOE, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and other agencies to support research on subjects of mutual interest, but the increasingly complex issues that face the food and agricultural sectors require more systematic efforts to ensure that AFRI programs maintain effective collaboration among federal agencies whose research programs are related to food, agriculture, human health and nutrition, and natural-resource systems while continuing to avoid unnecessary duplication. NIFA should take a leadership role in coordinating food and agriculture research throughout the federal R&D funding portfolio and lead an interagency working group to leverage investments that will continue to advance the knowledge base on food and agriculture.

External Advisory Council

Conclusion 3-B: AFRI needs an external advisory council to validate its strategic direction and to provide valuable guidance to national program leaders (NPLs) on programmatic decisions. Unlike NIH and NSF, AFRI does not have a formal, external, and strictly scientific advisory council. Such a council would be highly valuable for the following functions of the AFRI program: to guide, advise on, review, and assess on

an ongoing basis priority setting, resource allocation, program policies, and peer-review and award-management processes. NIH and NSF each have advisory groups on which NIFA could model its AFRI Scientific Advisory Council.

Recommendation 3-B: NIFA should form an AFRI Scientific Advisory Council that consists of members who represent the food and agricultural research, education, and extension professional communities. Such a council should provide scientific advice and advisory oversight on all aspects of AFRI’s program management and strategic planning, and council members should be selected based on their qualifications to perform these functions. The council would be similar to the scientific advisory councils used by NIH and NSF to help to validate the program’s direction (e.g., priority setting for research, education, and extension) and substantial changes in program structure (see Box 6-1 ). In contrast with the National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education, and Economics (NAREEE) advisory board, which advises the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture on all four topics (research, extension, education, and economics), the AFRI Scientific Advisory Council would specifically be designed to advise the AFRI program. This proposed AFRI Scientific Advisory Council might be possible within existing authority and funding (e.g., as part of the NAREEE authority); however, the committee does not prescribe how NIFA should seek this scientific advice.

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

As mentioned in Chapter 5 , the committee requested an organization chart and other information in an attempt to understand the structure of AFRI and how it was managed. The committee was unable to get complete information on those matters. On the basis of the responses provided, it appears to the committee that the AFRI structure is unnecessarily complicated and is characterized by an elusive chain of command. This complexity and lack of transparency has led to inefficient program management and operation. Given the goal of setting up the new program, developing program priorities, and balancing its portfolio to satisfy its congressional mandate, the committee expected that NIFA leadership would provide higher visibility for the program. AFRI is a program within NIFA that appears to be orphaned in that there is no clear line of leadership, strategy, and policy. However, the AFRI proposal-review and funding-decision processes that were set up during the National Research Initiative (NRI) and continue with AFRI appear to be rigorous and effective in selecting and funding high-quality science.

BOX 6-1 A Scientific Advisory Council for the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative

Each institute and center of NIH has a scientific advisory body. a Members represent professional communities and patient advocacy groups. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) has a mission similar to that of AFRI: to provide support for foundational research and training of the next generation of a diverse workforce in biomedical sciences. Its Advisory Council consists of leaders in the biologic and medical sciences, education, health care, and public affairs. Members are appointed for 4-year terms and meet three times a year. The council performs a second level of peer review for research and research-training grant applications assigned to NIGMS. Council members also offer advice and recommendations on policy and program development, program implementation, evaluation, and other matters of importance to the mission and goals of NIGMS.

In NSF, each directorate and office has an external scientific advisory body. b The advisory committees “provide advice and recommendations to maintain high standards of program support for research, education, and infrastructure; to facilitate policy deliberations, program development, and management; to identify disciplinary needs and opportunities; and to promote openness to the research and education community served by NSF.” Unlike NIH’s advisory councils, NSF’s advisory committees do not have responsibility for second-level review of proposals. However, they provide advice on program management, overall program balance, and other aspects of program performance through subcommittees called “Committee of Visitors.” c NSF’s advisory committees are made up of researchers, administrators, and educators in diverse communities. In the case of the Directorate for Biological Sciences, d members constitute a cross-section of biology with representatives of many subdisciplines in the field and other relevant fields, such as informatics and bioengineering; a cross-section of institutions, including industry; a cross-section of geographic areas; and a cross-section of women and underrepresented minorities.

______________

a See http://www.nigms.nih.gov/About/Council/Pages/default.aspx . Accessed December 23, 2013.

b See http://www.nsf.gov/about/performance/dir_advisory.jsp . Accessed December 23, 2013.

c See http://www.nsf.gov/about/performance/visitors.jsp . Accessed December 23, 2013.

d See http://www.nsf.gov/bio/advisory.jsp . Accessed December 23, 2013.

CONCLUSION 4: AFRI’s complex and diffuse management structure has made it difficult to efficiently and effectively manage the program. AFRI has many stakeholders it needs to be responsive to: Congress, the administration, various producer groups and interests, numerous scientific disciplinary interests, and consumers. AFRI also needs to more explicitly track—and track for longer periods—the outcomes and contributions of the research that it funds.

RECOMMENDATION 4: To enhance program accountability and management, AFRI should have a dedicated leader who manages the program on a daily basis. Improved processes and procedures should be created for transparency, and AFRI’s NPLs should be granted greater authority and flexibility to meet stated goals.

Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Director

Conclusion 4-A: AFRI is managed collectively by many people. No single administrator is responsible for overall program management or accountable for AFRI’s performance. As a result, program goals and internal operating procedures are not clearly articulated.

Recommendation 4-A: NIFA should establish a clearer organizational structure and lines of authority for AFRI, including a designated director to lead, manage, and speak for its program, and NPLs dedicated to AFRI alone. The AFRI entity could be analogous to NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences. In such a reorganization, NIFA should concentrate the workload of AFRI on an appropriate number of dedicated NPLs who interact directly with AFRI applicants and are accountable for the grants review and management process, including post-award management and assessment of overall program performance and balance. Concentrating AFRI management functions in the hands of selected NIFA staff should improve management efficiency without necessarily increasing total management effort.

Program Continuity and Transparency

Conclusion 4-B: The AFRI applicant community expressed frustration with the discontinuity of AFRI’s program offerings from one year to the next, which has impaired researchers’ ability to plan, resubmit unsuccessful proposals, and renew successful projects. For foundational programs, the committee received comments from applicants and panel managers that the highly prescriptive nature of RFAs discourages submission of innovative ideas. Paperwork was also long and burdensome for applicants. Furthermore, research priorities were often not communicated in a timely manner, resulting in unnecessarily extended lags between grant cycles. AFRI’s success will be determined in large part by how well the program attracts the best ideas from a broad community of qualified researchers in an array of disciplines.

Recommendation 4-B: NIFA should have a more consistent and predictable program portfolio and funding strategy to enable better planning by the food and agricultural research community. The predictability and continuity of the grants program are critical for the development of the research capacity for food, agriculture, and natural resources, particularly for young faculty seeking to establish effective research programs.

In addition, NIFA should consider publishing a single document that provides clear guidelines and policies for proposal preparation and award management. That would help in streamlining the RFA process and would eliminate confusion and excessive paperwork and thus not only help the applicant community but reduce the burden for AFRI program staff. As part of its plan to increase transparency, NIFA should publish a clear description of the AFRI review process, as NSF does on its merit-review Web site 1 and NIH on its peer-review Web site. 2 NSF’s proposal and award policies and procedures guide 3 constitutes an example of the type of guide needed for AFRI.

Data Management

Data are needed to inform management decisions and improve assessments of program efficiency and effectiveness. NIFA was unable to provide the committee with data needed for addressing many aspects of the committee’s tasks. Some of the data had not been collected, and some were internally inconsistent or could not be easily interpreted or summarized. One aspect that the committee was specifically tasked to examine was diversity of people and institutions supported by AFRI. AFRI does not collect additional data that would enable a robust assessment of the diversity of program applicants or awardees. On the basis of data on awarded projects, the committee found that AFRI is awarding grants to public and private institutions and to land-grant universities and non–land-grant universities in nearly the same ratios as did the former NRI program and approximately in proportion to the number of proposals emanating from such institutions.

Conclusion 4-C: The AFRI program lacks a sufficiently robust information-management system and metrics for measuring key pro-

_______________

1 See http://www.nsf.gov/about/performance/visitors.jsp . Accessed December 23, 2013.

2 See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer_review_process.htm . Accessed December 23, 2013.

3 See http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/index.jsp . Accessed December 23, 2013.

gram impacts. The Current Research Information System (CRIS) 4 used by NIFA was not designed as a tool for managing competitive funds and is an inadequate aid for program-management decisions: it is difficult to navigate and manipulate for programmatic needs and not readily compatible with other systems. AFRI needs an information-management system that can provide the accurate information that is necessary for structured analyses of program activities and for analyzing and assessing project and programmatic outputs and outcomes. Conducting performance analyses will require systematic attention to medium-term and long-term outputs and, more importantly, projection of outcomes in the form of the science influenced, social and individual well-being, and products and incomes generated.

Recommendation 4-C: NIFA should use a more robust information-management system that would provide a basis for AFRI policy and strategic planning. The system should allow detailed assessment and management of the food and agricultural competitive research funding pool. Data collection would need to be comprehensive, and this would require a redesigned and expanded CRIS that would be responsive to AFRI’s needs and capable of communicating with other federal research-analysis systems. The system would apprise NIFA management and others of AFRI program and project performance, document the scientific and technological products of AFRI grantees, and respond to congressional and public requests for AFRI information. Such a database is critical for conducting post-award monitoring and enabling managers to measure the outputs and outcomes of AFRI research more effectively. Other funding agencies, such as NIH and NSF, are constantly working to improve their information-management systems, and NIFA should work with them toward a system that would be interoperable across agencies.

Post-Award Management

Conclusion 4-D: NIFA needs clearly defined metrics for measuring program outputs and outcomes that allow program managers to assess the value of AFRI-funded research. Project-output assessment affords only one perspective on the performance of AFRI. Some valuable benefits and contributions of the program cannot be captured by assessments of program outputs alone. Examples of the other benefits are such outcomes as AFRI’s role in encouraging graduate students and young

4 As of the writing of this report, the committee is aware of USDA’s plans to retire CRIS and to replace it with another reporting system.

scientists to develop careers in food and agriculture, its role in advancing the quality of agriculture and food science and in increasing the knowledge base, and its contributions to the innovations that underpin economic development. Appropriate changes are needed to give NPLs the time and resources needed to provide a higher level of post-award management (including post-termination monitoring) designed to ensure that grants reach the most successful conclusions and outcomes attainable.

Recommendation 4-D: NIFA should develop the capability to regularly evaluate AFRI projects in terms of their outcomes, which would allow assessment of the economic and social impacts of the research that AFRI supports. In addition to the standard bibliometric measures, quantitative rates-of-return and qualitative outcomes assessments will need to include such information as important scientific advances, concrete economic impacts, patents, young-scientist training, and improvements in processes, products, or productive jobs. Both output analyses and outcome analyses will require NIFA to maintain post-termination relationships with its grantees after projects have ended and allow it to chart, for example, the progress of graduate students and young scientists who were supported by AFRI funds. To facilitate more comprehensive program assessment, AFRI should maintain post-termination relationships with grantees to monitor and document medium-term and longer-term outcome-related information.

Greater Authority for National Program Leaders

Conclusion 4-E: In their project-funding decisions, NPLs are tasked to ensure that a maximum number of high-priority issues are addressed and that funded projects align maximally with program goals. Yet NPLs have been unnecessarily constrained in their efforts to manage and balance the AFRI portfolio. The committee noted several ways in which NPLs were constrained in participating in funding decisions that would allow a better portfolio balance to align with AFRI’s mission and goals. For example, funding decisions are typically based solely on peer-reviewed rankings without consideration of the funding portfolio’s programmatic balance. That continues to occur despite NIFA’s policy that reviewers’ comments are advisory and not binding. Funding allocations to program areas are set before the award decision-making process, and this can limit the ability of NPLs to capitalize on innovative ideas presented in proposals and to pursue the most promising scientific opportunities.

Recommendation 4-E: NIFA should establish standard operating procedures (SOPs) that provide greater opportunity for NPLs to contribute to final project-funding decisions. Although peer-review ranking should be a principal factor in guiding the AFRI funding process, AFRI should consider portfolio and programmatic balance and take steps to achieve an appropriate balance when making final funding decisions. Such considerations would include balancing various food and agricultural issues and various scientific disciplines; the types of awards (e.g., high-risk, high-payoff projects); and the diversity of investigators, institution types, and geographical distributions. SOPs governing the process should be transparent, outline the criteria for balancing the portfolio, and include a mechanism for moving an allocation from one program area to another when overall program balance is needed. As mentioned in Chapter 5 , AFRI’s large awards have taken more time to review and manage than has apparently been allotted, raising post-award administration costs above those in other agencies. The advisory council recommended above (see Box 6-1 ) could be used in some manner to provide independent assessments of programmatic decisions. NPLs are PhD-level scientists in good standing in their own disciplinary communities who were recruited to manage AFRI grants on the basis of their scientific credentials, and they should be trusted to exercise their professional judgment. With such new responsibilities, the portfolios of AFRI NPLs would need to be rebalanced to allow proper attention to programmatic direction and post-award scientific management. SOPs would also need to include a mechanism for training new NPLs and panel managers.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

During the time the committee was conducting its review, Congress passed the 2014 Farm Bill and appropriated an increase in funding for AFRI in FY 2014. The reauthorization of the Farm Bill did not change the priorities for AFRI, reaffirming the importance of this program to sustain the nation’s preeminence in knowledge generation and technology advances in the food and agricultural sectors. However, the 2014 Farm Bill contained a provision requiring non–land-grant universities to match funds for AFRI grants. This approach is counterproductive to the goal of attracting the broadest array of the nation’s top scientific talent to research and to bringing nontraditional and novel approaches and solutions for food and agricultural challenges. In the future, NIFA should acquire data to determine the impact of this requirement on non–land-grant entities participating in the AFRI program.

NIFA and its AFRI program are essential elements of USDA and will be critical for enhancing the knowledge base needed to successfully address important issues in agriculture, food, and natural resources. The increase in FY 2014 appropriations for this flagship competitive research program is consistent with this report’s findings, conclusions, and recommendations and applauded and suggests that USDA has a window of opportunity to establish NIFA as a strong science agency with AFRI at its core and to reinforce the value and mission of AFRI to the nation’s well-being. The committee offers its recommendations in the hope that the suggested programmatic changes will enable NIFA to fulfill its mission of leading the food and agricultural sectors to a better future through research, education, and extension.

NRC (National Research Council). 2009. A New Biology for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

PCAST (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology). 2012. Report to the President on Agricultural Preparedness and the Agriculture Research Enterprise. Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President.

World Resources Institute. 2013. Creating a sustainable food future: A menu of solutions to sustainably feed more than 9 billion people by 2050. World Resources Report 2013-14: Interim Findings. Available online at http://www.wri.org/publication/creating-sustainable-food-future-interim-findings (accessed July 30, 2014).

The United States embarked on bold polices to enhance its food and agricultural system during the last half of the 19th century, investing first in the education of people and soon thereafter in research and discovery programs aimed at acquiring new knowledge needed to address the complex challenges of feeding a growing and hungry nation. Those policies, sustained over 125 years, have produced the most productive and efficient agricultural and food system in history.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the primary agency responsible for supporting innovations and advances in food and agriculture. USDA funds are allocated to support research through several mechanisms, including the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). In 2008, Congress replaced USDA's National Research Initiative with AFRI, creating USDA's flagship competitive research grants program, and the 2008 Food, Conservation, and Energy Act, known as the Farm Bill, outlined the structure of the new program. Spurring Innovation in Food and Agriculture assesses the effectiveness of AFRI in meeting the goals laid out by Congress and its success in advancing innovations and competitiveness in the U.S. food and agriculture system.

Spurring Innovation in Food and Agriculture evaluates the value, relevance, quality, fairness, and flexibility of AFRI. This report also considers funding policies and mechanisms and identifies measures of the effectiveness and efficiency of AFRI's operation. The study examines AFRI's role in advancing science in relation to other research and grant programs inside of USDA as well as how complementary it is to other federal research and development programs. The findings and conclusions of this report will help AFRI improve its functions and effectiveness in meeting its goals and outcomes.

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Food Research Paper

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Food as Medicine

Domestication of plants and animals, how domestication occurred, domestication of plants, domestication of animals, the present, future directions.

• Bibliography

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Introduction

By 2009 the world population has reached 6.7 billion people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2009). In 1900, there were “only” 1.65 billion people on earth, 2.5 billion by 1950, with a projected 9 billion by 2050. While a number of factors have affected this exponential increase, not the least of which is reallocation of resources and labor (Boone, 2002), the abundance and distribution of food has played a major role, spurring technology to increase production and distribution. The result is the food crisis emerging in this early part of the 21st century.

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Leading to this crisis, there are four major “events” in the history of food use. The first is cooking—the act of using heat to transform a substance from one state to another. This is an emergent behavior, as no other primate does anything like it. The second event, equally as dramatic, is the domestication of plants and animals; the outcome has been increasing control of resources (plants, animals) to the point of manufacture. This manufacture has included husbandry procedures, breeding, sterilization, and the like—and most recently, genetic engineering. The third event, directly related to manufacture, is the dispersion of foods throughout the world, which is a continuous process beginning at the time of domestication and continuing today, albeit now in the form of globalization. The “typical” diets of China, Italy, France, or anywhere are the result of diffusion and dispersion of these domesticated plants or animals, known as domesticates (Sokolov, 1991). The fourth event is the industrialization of food. This is an ongoing event beginning in the latter part of the 18th century with the invention of canning (Graham, 1981) and continuing today in the form of frozen meals, new packaging materials, ways of reconstituting foods, and, in the near future, creating animal “meat” by tissue engineering (Edelman, McFarland, Mironov, & Matheny, 2005). The purpose of this research paper is to describe the events concerning the human use of food in the past (prehistory to the 1700s) and present, and speculate on the trends for the future.

We are primates, descended from a long line that began around 80 million years ago (Ackermann & Cheverud, 2004). As a group, primates are omnivores and consume nuts, seeds, leaves, stalks, pith, underground roots and storage organs, flowers, insects, lizards, birds, eggs, and mammals. The source of nutrients, or its emphasis, varies from group to group so that it is possible to classify primates by food intake. Table 1 illustrates these groups.

Prosimians, or lower primates, tend to be insect eaters while certain types of these primates prefer lizards or small invertebrates; monkeys—both Old and New World—rely on fruits with a significant input from insects or small vertebrates. Apes eat from a variety of larders (food supplies) depending on type: orangutans eat fruit, gorillas eat stalks and pith, and chimps eat fruit and hunt for mammals—but none eat one type to the exclusion of all else. Physical specializations to extract nutrients from the source vary greatly. Some primates ferment their food; others reingest it.

The shape of teeth and jaws, and the length of gut and digestive tract, also affect different emphases of diet. Fruit eaters, for example, are equipped with molars that are not shaped for crushing or grinding, but are small in relation to their body size (Kay, 2005). Some leaf eaters, like colobines or howler monkeys, have sacculated stomachs containing bacteria that aid in digestion. One type of lemur is probably coprophagous; that is, like rabbits, it ingests its own waste pellets to extract semidigested nutrients. The length of the gut in primates that eat any kind of animal is 4 to 6 times its body length, while that of a leaf eater is 10 to 30 times its body length (Milton, 1993).

Primates, unlike some other mammals, require certain vitamins. The most important substances, vitamins B 12 and C, must be obtained from outside sources. In the case of B 12 , it must be extracted from animals including insects (Wakayama, Dillwith, Howard, & Blomquist, 1984), and for vitamin C, from fruits and a little from muscle meat. Genes controlling the manufacture of these substances were reassigned ( exapted ), as it were, to other functions when the anthropoid group of monkeys, apes, and humans split from prosimians. The genetic information is affirmed by the fact that some prosimian relatives of the earliest primates are still able to synthesize these substances (Milton, 1993).

The model for human evolution derives from the behavior and physiology of African apes, particularly the two kinds of chimpanzees: the bonobo and the common chimpanzee. These primates are more active than either gorillas or orangutans and a good deal more sociable than the orangutan, also known as the red giant of Asia. Their choice of diet is considered an important factor in their activity, as larger primates tend to rely on leaves and foliage, as do gorillas, who have a range of only around 300 meters per day. Fruit eaters are not only more active than foliage eaters, they are more eclectic in their diet, including nuts, seeds, berries, and especially insects of some sort because fruits are an inadequate source of protein (Rothman, Van Soest, & Pell, 2006). They are also considered to be more “intelligent,” as witnessed by recent studies of New World capuchin monkeys, and Old World macaques and chimpanzees. Chimps can take in as much as 500 grams of animal protein a week (Goodall, 1986; Milton, 1993).

Animal protein is considered high-quality food, and the importance of high-quality protein to the evolution of the human brain cannot be underestimated (Leonard, 2002). From only 85 grams (3.5 ounces) of animal protein, 200 kilocalories are obtained. In comparison, this amount of fruit would provide about 100 kilocalories, and leaves would provide considerably less—about 20 kilocalories. The daily range of chimpanzees can extend to about 4 kilometers per day, and their societies are highly complex social groups. It is this complexity that enables them to conduct their hunts, coordinating members as they approach their prey using glances, piloerection, and pointing. Since primates evolved from insectivores at a time when fruits and flowers were also evolving, their ability to exploit this new resource demonstrates the most important characteristic of primates: flexibility.

Primates can readily adapt to extreme conditions like drought. Under harsh conditions, primates will seek (as indeed, humans do) what are called fallback foods. These are foods like bark, or even figs, that are less desirable because they lack ingredients such as fats or sweet carbohydrates (Knott, 2005). Primates have a remarkable repertoire of methods to deal with changes in food availability: They can change their diets; they can change their location; they change their behavior according to the energy they take in (Brockman, 2005).

This flexibility in adapting behavior to changing circumstances was a decisive advantage for the primates, as they implemented the underlying knowledge about resources with the ability to remember locations of specific foods. Equally as important is the ability to evaluate the probability of encountering predators in these locations. The ability to adapt to environmental and social changes depends not only on genetic evolution but, as Hans Kummer (1971) noted, on cultural processes arrived at through group living. The behavioral mode responds more quickly to dynamic situations than does physical evolution.

Gathering, Hunting, and the Beginnings of Food Control

The ancestors of humans continued the food-gathering techniques of their primate predecessors, gathering invertebrates and small vertebrates, as well as plant materials, in the trees, on the ground, and below ground. As prey gets larger, the techniques shift from one individual working to a concerted, group effort. The former is seen in the behavior of capuchin monkeys and baboons, and the more sophisticated planning and coordination is well documented among chimpanzees. With greater reliance on meat, there are more changes in the primate body—the more reliance on protein, the more prevalence of the hormone ghrelin. Ghrelin is active in promoting the organism to eat, and therefore causes an increase in body mass and the conservation of body fat (Cummings, Foster-Schubert, & Overduin, 2005).

The secretion of ghrelin stimulates the growth hormone as it increases body mass. Human brains require huge amounts of energy—as much as 25% of our total energy needs. Most mammals, in contrast, require up to about 5%, and our close relatives, the other nonhuman primates, need about 10% at the most (Leonard, 2002; Leonard & Robertson, 1992, 1994; Paabo, 2003). The brains of our other close relatives, the australopiths, were apelike, measuring about 400 cubic centimeters (cc) at 4 mya. Our ancestor, Homo, experienced rapid brain expansion from 600 cc in Homo habilis at 2.5 mya, to 900 cc in Homo erectus in only a half-million years. This value is just below the lowest human value of 950 cc.

Somewhere near this period of time, Homo erectus began using fire to cook. While the association with fire may have been long-standing (Burton, 2009), its use in transforming plants and animals from one form to a more digestible one appears to have begun after 2 mya, and according to some, the date of reckoning is 1.9 mya (Platek, Gallup, & Fryer, 2002).

Tubers are underground storage organs (USOs) of plants. They became more abundant after about 8.2 mya, when the impact of an asteroid cooled the earth creating an environment favoring the evolution of C4 plants over C3 ones (trees and some grasses). The USOs are often so hard or so large that they cannot easily be eaten, and contain toxic substances. Heat from a fire softens the USO, making cell contents accessible, and it also renders the toxic compounds harmless.

For some years, Richard Wrangham and coworkers (Wrangham & Conklin-Brittain, 2003; Wrangham, 2001; Wrangham, McGrew, de Waal, & Heltne, 1994) have been proposing that cooking was the major influence in human evolution. As explained, the application of heat made USOs more nutritively accessible. Recently, in an experiment to test this hypothesis, captive chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans were offered cooked and uncooked carrots, and sweet and white potatoes. Apparently there was a strong tendency for the great apes to prefer softer items (Wobber, Hare, & Wrangham, 2008). While monkeys dig for corms and the like (Burton, 1972), the finding that chimpanzees use tools to dig up USOs (Hernandez-Aguilar, Moore, & Pickering, 2007) underscores the appeal of this hypothesis. In addition, there is evidence that Homo had already been using tools for over a half-million years when cooking probably began. The inclusion of “meat” in cooking had to have begun by 1.8 mya because there is substantial evidence of big-game hunting by this date. Equally important to Wrangham and colleagues is the consideration that the jaws and teeth of these members of Homo could not have dealt with the fibrousness and toughness of mammalian meat (Wrangham & Conklin-Brittain, 2003). This is despite the fact that apes and monkeys regularly partake of raw flesh; all primates eat insects, and many eat small vertebrates like lizards.

Insects are not termed meat, although their nutritive value is comparable. Certainly the early Homo was eating mammals. Recent evidence from Homo ergaster shows that this hominin was infested with tapeworms by 1.7 mya and that these parasites came from mammals (Hoberg, Alkire, de Queiroz, & Jones, 2001). The remains suggest that either the cooking time at this site was too short, or the temperature was not high enough to kill the parasitic larvae, but also that these hominins were utilizing fire as an instrument of control in their environment. The knowledge base of our ancestors was extensive: It had to be for them to prosper, and it included knowledge of medicinal qualities of plants in their habitat.

It is now well attested that animals self-medicate (Engel, 2002; Huffman, 1997). Plants are used externally as, for example, insect repellent or poultices on wounds, and internally against parasites and gastrointestinal upsets. They may also regulate fertility, as recent evidence suggests that the higher the fats versus protein or carbohydrate, the more males are born (Rosenfeld et al., 2003), and the higher the omega-6 versus omega-3, the more females are born (Fountain et al., 2007; Green et al., 2008). The fact that the animals seem to know the toxic limits of the substances they use and consume is also significant (Engel, 2002).

As knowledge is passed from generation to generation, it crosses lines of species. Homo erectus became Homo sapiens, and their knowledge base was a compendium of all that had gone before that could be remembered. Hence, the knowledge base included the breeding habits of plants and animals, their annual cycles, and where and when to find them, as well as what dangers were associated with them.

Somewhere between the advent of Homo sapiens, at the earliest around 250,000 years ago, and first evidence around 15 kya, this knowledge became translated into domestication. The process of domestication was first delineated by Zeuner (1963). Foreshortening of the muzzle, lightening of the fur, and crowding of the teeth are characteristic of this condition. There are even changes in the part of the brain relating to fear, as there is a relaxation toward the fearful stimulus—in this case with humans— under domestication (Hare & Tomasello, 2005). Because human care is extended to the domesticate, a relaxation of natural selection occurs as nonadaptive traits are supported. This process is seen in sheep, and laboratory and pet mice, as well as dogs, and whatever other animal has been domesticated.

Evidence of diets having components of domestication is attested to by microwear patterns, detected with an electron microscope. These can be found on teeth; isotope analysis of the ratio of C3 to C4 plants, since the latter include more domesticated plants; biomechanics; and anatomical characteristics, such as tooth size or length of shearing crests on molars. Researchers also experiment with various kinds of abrasion and compare these to the “unknown”—the fossil. Biomechanics, an engineering type of study, analyzes forces and examines tooth and bone under the conditions of different diets.

While earlier in our history, only about 30% of the dietary intake would have come from eating organisms that ate C4 plants, under domestication, the number of animals as well as C4 plants increased. This is known from isotope analysis, which evaluates how CO 2 is taken up by plants, and which can estimate the proportion of C3 to C4 plants in the diet. What’s more, the nature of the diet itself can be understood.

Descriptions of domestication follow different theoretical models. Terms like center, zone, or even homeland relate to a view of process and dispersion. How many separate areas of independent domestication there were relative to subareas that received the domesticate or knowledge on how to domesticate also depends on the scholar. A general consensus is that there were seven separate areas where domestication took place: the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Mesoamerica, South America, eastern North America, and from the Near East to Europe, with firm evidence dating from between 12,000 and 10,000 BCE in the Fertile Crescent of west Asia. The time of transition between hunting and gathering and cultivation of plants and animals is well documented at a number of sites. One, in the Levant, at Ohalo II near Haifa, has evidence for the earliest brush dwellings (Nadel, 2003) and is fairly typical of this transition period. It is dated radiometrically to 19,500 BP (or radiocarbon years before present, RCYBP), which gives a calibrated date of between 22,500 and 23,500 BP (Nadel, 2003). In this Upper Paleolithic, or Epipaleolithic site, evidence from dentition suggests an abrasive diet emphasizing food based on cereals, fish, and a variety of local animals, especially gazelle. In addition to wild barley, wheat, and fruits, small-grained grasses were well represented in the remains (Weiss, Wetterstrom, Nadel, & Bar-Yosef, 2004). The Ohalo II people occupied the site for at least two seasons, likely spring and autumn (Kislev, Nadel, & Carmic, 1992) and perhaps throughout the year (Bar-Yosef, 1998) in brush huts along the lakeshore. These sites at the end of the Upper Paleolithic along the Mediterranean, and in Europe during the Mesolithic, indicate that plants were relied on as dietary objects and may well have been cared for around campsites to ensure their growth.

The specifics of how domestication occurred in each region differ (Bar-Yosef, 1998). Classical theories seeking to analyze the how and why of domestication focus on the environment, population growth, the organization and management of small-scale societies, trade, and changes in the daily schedule (Sutton & Anderson, 2004) . Extending in time from the 18th century, the discussion of these is too complex and lengthy to be included here. More recently, Boone (2002) invoked an energy-budget model, consonant with contemporary notions of evolutionary demography and ecology. A scenario then emerged based on archaeological evidence that the climate was becoming increasingly unpredictable. These dramatic changes in climate, some of them a result of asteroids (Firestone et al., 2007), caused big game to decrease. The subsistence base changed to accommodate the lessened availability, requiring the diet to become more diverse. Fishing became important as groups moved to rich coastal areas, especially along the Mediterranean (e.g., the Levant and Turkey). Activities changed as a consequence, since traditional jobs were now replaced and the need to “follow the herds” was replaced with sedentism, itself a complex phenomenon defined by activities at a given locale as well as infrastructure developed there (Bar-Yosef, 1998).

While populations over most of prehistory had overall zero growth, the cultural processes that emerged with hominines affected mortality and population increase (Boone, 2002), culturally “buffering” local climatic and environmental changes. Brush huts and other shelters are emblematic of this. Larger groups encouraged specializations to emerge. A concomitant to climate change was the decrease in big game. These had provided substantial amounts of protein, and some, because of their size, had little or no predator response, making them particularly easy for small people with limited technology to overcome (Surovell, Waguespack, & Brantingham, 2005). So proficient had the hominines become that these efforts apparently caused massive extinctions of megafauna worldwide, in particular, proboscideans (Alroy, 2001; Surovell et al., 2005).

The actual effect humans have had on megafauna elsewhere, however, remains controversial (Brook & Bowman, 2002), and the demise of big game may indeed owe more to an extraterrestrial impact around 12 kya and its concomitant effect on climate (Firestone et al., 2007). At the same time, humans were obliged to include in their larder a wide variety of foods that either were not as palatable or required a great deal more effort for the caloric return— rather like the choices of fallback foods that nonhuman primates make under poor environmental conditions. The heads of cereals (wheat or barley, for example) need to be gathered, dried, ground, and boiled to make satisfactory “bread.” They can be, and are, eaten whole, with the consequence of heavy dental abrasion (Mahoney, 2007). The circular process of exploiting new or different resources required techniques and technology to extract nutrients, and in turn, the new methods provided access to new food sources (Boone, 2002): Between the 7th and the 5th millennia, for example, milk was being consumed by farmers in southeastern Europe, Anatolia, and the Levant. The evidence comes from comparing the residue left on pottery sherds—that of fat from fatty acid from milk to carcass fats (Evershed et al., 2008).

In his discussions of the San, Richard Lee (1979) noted that the cultural practice of reciprocal food sharing, as complex as it was, functioned as storage in a climate where there was no other means: As perishable meat was given away, it ensured the giver a return portion some days later. Had the giver kept the entire kill, undoubtedly most of it would have spoiled. Stiner (2001) references Binford’s suggestion that the development of storage systems was one of the technological “inventions” that must have accompanied the broadening of the diet so that the new variety of seeds and grain could be kept for some days. While hunter-gatherers, even until the end of the old ways (until 1965), would gather grain heads as they walked from one camping site to another— an observation documented in the Australian government’s films on the Arunta—the development of implements to break open the grain heads, removing the chaff and pulverizing the germ, perhaps preceded domestication. As grains and grasses became more important in the diet, the gathering of those that failed to explode and release their seed grain became the staple domesticates. The advent of domestication has been dated at the various areas illustrated in Table 2.

Early domestication developed in different ways in different areas, as local people responded to local exigencies in different conditions and with different cultural standards (Evershed et al., 2008). Gathering and colonization were how plants and animals came to be domesticated, with some evidence that people practiced cultivation in naturally growing areas of desirable plants. By removing competitors, distributing water, or protecting from predators, the people were able to enhance the growth of the desired plant. Because plants were gathered and brought back to home base, some seeds took root nearby. Awareness of the relationship of these seeds to the burgeoning plant spurred the next stage. Those plants that were gathered often had less efficient dispersal mechanisms. Their seed heads did not break off, and their seeds did not blow away. This was the case for flax, peas, beans, and many others, facilitating their cultivation. It seems a natural progression to the next step, outright sowing.

Gathering of seeds, and keeping them for the next season, was the final and significant step in the process of domestication, but it requires surplus as well as foresight and storage facilities. The seeds that would become the next season’s crop were selected for some attribute they possessed: The plant had produced more, the seeds were less volatile, less able to disperse, or predators had been kept from taking them. Forms of plants that were more suitable were selected, probably initially unconsciously, and later intentionally—skewing the genetic mix in favor of domestication.

The supposition about animal domestication includes various ideas: Perhaps the cubs of hunted mothers were brought home and raised; some kinds of animals “followed” people home where making a living was easier; animals were kept in corrals or tethered to allow captive ones to mate with the wild until the population grew substantially so that taking them was easier; or animals showing traits such as aggression not favorable to people were eliminated from the gene pool. The “big five” of domesticated animals—pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, and goats—were domesticated in different regions, independently from one another (Diamond, 2002), whereas domestication of plants seems to have diffused through areas. The animals that became domesticated were those that had behavioral traits that permitted it: They were gregarious and lived in herds where following the leader was part of the repertoire. Diamond (2002) suggests that it is the geographic range in which domesticates were found that influenced whether there were single or multiple areas of origin. The range of the big five is so great in each case that they were independently domesticated throughout, whereas the plants had a more limited range and so both domesticates and process diffused.

A population boom is clearly recorded at the centers of domestication (e.g., the city of Jericho in the Near East had up to 3,000 people living in it by 8500 BCE, according to the original researcher, Kathleen Kenyon, although that number has been revised downward [as cited in Bar-Yosef, 1986]). In these centers, there were an impressive number of people supporting themselves on a variety of domesticated plants such as einkorn, emmer wheat, and barley. The city of Teotihuacan in what is now Mexico had a population of 200,000 just before the Spaniards arrived (Hendon & Joyce, 2003). The abundance of food has its repercussions in population size with a concomitant development of trade specializations.

Over time, however, the benefits of agriculture become somewhat overshadowed. Zoonoses from association with farm animals increased. Tapeworms were known from 1.7 mya along with hookworm and forms of dysentery. Because settlements were often near bodies of still water such as marshes or streams, malaria became endemic. The development of agriculture and its concomitant population increase encouraged a variety of contagious diseases in the human population. In addition, noninfectious diseases became increasingly apparent: arthritis; repetitive strain injury; caries; osteoporosis; rickets; bacterial infections; birthing problems; and crowded teeth, anemia, and other forms of nutritional stress, especially in weanlings who were weaned from mother’s milk to grain mush. Caries and periodontal disease accompanied softer food and increased dependence on carbohydrates (Swedlund & Armelagos, 1990). Lung diseases caused by association with campfires, often maintained within a dwelling without proper ventilation, plagued humanity as well (Huttner, Beyer, & Bargon, 2007). Warfare also makes its appearance as state societies fight over irrigation, territory, and resources, and have and have-not groups vie for their privileges (Gat, 2006). Hunter-gatherers were generally not only healthier, but taller. The decrease in height is probably a result of less calcium or vitamin D, and insufficient essential amino acids, because meat became more prized and was only distributed to the wealthy. Women suffered differentially, as males typically received the best cuts and more, especially when meat was not abundant (Cohen & Armelagos, 1984).

The more mouths to feed, the greater the incentive to develop farming techniques to increase supporting output. Implements changed, human labor gave way to animal labor, metal replaced wood, carts and their wheels became more sophisticated, but above all, selection of seed and breed animals became more trait specific as knowledge grew. The associated decrement in variety began early and has continued to the present.

The changes that have taken place in the use of plants and animals are momentous. The idea of change promoted the advances that mark the 18th century. As has too often been the case, warfare encouraged new technology. Napoleon’s dictum that armies run on their stomachs inspired competition to find a way to preserve food for his campaigns. Metal, rather than glass, was soon introduced to preserve food in a vacuum (Graham, 1981). It did not always work: Botulism and lead poisoning from solder used to seal the tin played havoc with health. (Currently, the bisphenol in the solder is also a concern.) Nevertheless, the technique was not abandoned, especially as it meant that food could be eaten out of season. “Exotic” foods from elsewhere could now be introduced from one country to another. The ingredients of Italian spaghetti are an obvious case in point: noodles from China, tomatoes from Mesoamerica, and beef originally from the Fertile Crescent combined in one place at different dates. For very different historical reasons, the Conquistadors brought much of it back to Europe after Columbus’s momentous voyage. Diffusion of crops and techniques had occurred since they were first developed, evident in the “Muslim agricultural revolution” at the height of Islam from 700 CE to the 12th century (DeYoung, 1984; Kaba, 1984; Watson, 1983). During this period, China received soybeans, which arrived in c. 1000 CE, and peanut oil—both staples in the modern Chinese diet. Millet had been more important in China than rice (just as in contemporary west Africa, corn is replacing the more proteinaceous millet), and tea was a novelty until the Tang dynasty.

In “the present,” the kind of foodstuffs that could be dispersed elaborated the inventory. The Industrial Revolution, with its harnessing of fossil fuel (coal) to produce energy (steam), further encouraged the process as travel time diminished. Food could be eaten—fresh—out of season and brought from thousands of miles away. The refrigerator truck could take food from its source, usually unripe, and deliver it thousands of miles away. With this new mechanism, the food value in the produce is diminished, but the extravagance of eating produce out of season remains.

Rivaling the distribution of foodstuffs in its impact on human history is the continued control of breeding. Indeed, Darwin’s great work proposed “natural” selection in contrast to husbandry, or “artificial” selection. Before the gene was known and named—properly a 20th-century achievement— “inheritance” in humans was sufficiently understood in the form of eugenics (with its dubious history) as put forth by Galton in the late 1880s. When Mendel’s findings were recovered in 1900, Bateson named the gene (1905–1906), and Morgan discovered the chromosome (1910), genetics got seriously under way, and culminated, in the context of this research paper, in the Green Revolution.

By the 1960s, famine had become a major world issue, with increasing frequency and severity: the Bengal famine of 1942 to 1945; the famine in China between 1958 and 1961, which killed 30 million people; and the famines in Africa, especially Ethiopia and the west African Sahel in the early 1970s (Sen, 1981) rivaled the famines recorded in ancient history and throughout modern history, especially in the late 19th century. Although the causes of famine are usually environmental, for example drought or pests, the underlying causes are often economic and political (Sen, 1981). In the United States, the President’s Science Advisory Committee (1967) issued a report noting that the problem of famine, worldwide, was severe, and could be predicted to continue unless and until an unprecedented effort to bring about new policies was inaugurated (Hazell, n.d.).

In an attempt to bypass the underlying issues by producing more food for starving millions, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations initiated what was named the Green Revolution. This was a dramatic change in farming techniques introduced to have-not countries of the time: India, China, and nations throughout Asia and Central America.

Mexico had initiated this decades earlier, in the early 1940s, when Norman Borlaug (1997) developed highyielding, dwarf varieties of plants. Production increased exponentially, and seed and technology from the “experiment” in Mexico was soon exported to India and Pakistan. At the occasion of his Nobel Prize being awarded in 1970, Borlaug noted that wheat production had risen substantially in India and Pakistan: From 1964 to 1965, a record harvest of 4.6 million tons of wheat was produced in Pakistan. The harvest increased to 6.7 million tons in 1968, by which time West Pakistan had become self-sufficient. Similarly, India became self-sufficient by the late 1960s, producing record harvests of 12.3 million tons, which increased to 20 million tons in the 1970s (Borlaug, 1997).

To sustain these harvests, however, petrochemicals had to be employed, and land had to be acquired. The new genetic seeds were bred for traits requiring fertilizers, pesticides, and water. Since the mid-1990s, the enthusiasm for the Green Revolution has waned as the numbers of the hungry have increased worldwide, and production has decreased. According to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) (2008), the global rice yields have risen by less than 1% per year in the past several decades.

The explanations for the decrease vary, but among the most important is the fact that soil degradation results from intensity of farming, and petrochemicals that do not “feed” the soil itself. Depletion in soil nutrients requires stronger fertilizers; pesticides select for resistant pests and diseases, which in turn require stronger pesticides. Poorly trained farmers overuse the petrochemicals, exacerbating the situation. Irrigation itself causes a serious problem: The evaporation of water leaves a salt residue that accumulates in the soil. There is a concomitant loss of fertility estimated as 25 million acres per year, that is, nearly 40% of irrigated land worldwide (Rauch, 2003). In addition, new genetic breeds have not addressed social factors: Water supplies are regional, and irrigation requires financial resources; and farmers with greater income buy up smaller holdings and can afford to purchase industrial equipment. Access to food was not enhanced by the Green Revolution, especially in Africa (Dyson, 1999), where imports are approximately one third of the world’s rice (IRRI, 2008). It is access to food, more than abundance or pest resistance, that mitigates famine, dramatically demonstrated by Sen (1981). Determining access falls into the hands of government— implementing social security programs, maintaining political stability, and legislating property rights. The small farmers then move to cities, which become overcrowded, and lack employment.

While access has improved in some areas, the increase in population—often occurring exponentially—requires yet greater production. The response has been what, at the end of the 1990s, some have termed frankenfood (Thelwall & Price, 2006), or genetically engineered seed. This combines traits from very different species to enhance the plant. Thus, cold-water genes from fish are put into wheat to enable it to grow in regions not hospitable to the plant, or plants are engineered to resist a herbicide that would otherwise kill it as it destroys competitors. Transgenic genes might allow insemination for a variety of plants into soil that has become infertile due to salinization, and thereby extend productivity to regions where production has long ago ceased (Rauch, 2003).

Genetically modified (GM) plants are spreading throughout the world, even as some countries refuse them entry. The powerful corporations and governments that endorse their use see them as a panacea: New varieties for new climate issues, which themselves, like global warming, have arisen as a result of human activity, not the least of which is the industrialization of food. In addition, farmers are restricted from using seed from engineered plants, even if they blow into their fields, as the seeds are, in effect, copyrighted and the use of them has caused expensive legal challenges (“In Depth,” 2004). While GM crops are less damaging to the environment than typical introduced species, as the numbers and distribution of these increase, the probabilities of them spreading, evolving, and mixing with local varieties increases (Peterson et al., 2000). Early “evidence” at the beginning of the century that transgenes had entered the genomes of local plants in Oaxaca, Mexico, was based on two distinctive gene markers. The studies were corroborated by government agencies but further controlled, and a peer-reviewed study of a huge sample of farms and corn plants did not find transgenes in this region (Ortiz-García et al., 2005). The question therefore remains moot, at least in Mexico, but the issue gave rise to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (1999–2000), which regulates the movement of living modified organisms—plant and animal—whether for direct release or for food (Clapp, 2006). A number of countries in Europe and Africa have refused modified seed, although pressure on them to accept the seed continues. The Food and Agriculture Association’s (FAO) Swaminathan (2003) has urged India not to permit a “genetic divide” to exclude it from equality with other developing nations. Anxious that there not be a genetic divide between those countries that pursue transgenic organisms and those that do not, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has echoed this concern (WHO/EURO, 2000).

Over time, selection for certain desired traits and hybridization of stock to develop specific traits (resistance to disease, etc.) has meant the loss of biodiversity in agriculture. Conservation of seed, by agencies like the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and seed banks, like IRRI in the Philippines, and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, have been established in order to retain plant biodiversity. Their purpose is to have available strains that can reinvigorate domesticated species with genes from the “wild type.” Because domestication reduces variation, these “banks” become increasingly important (AcostaGallegos, Kelly, & Gepts, 2007).

Certainly there will be more technological advances as the pressure for food continues and the area available for cultivation diminishes. The growth of genetic modification over the past decade has been exponential and is a harbinger of the future. The food crisis in the mid-1970s caused by oil prices, and the world summit on finding solutions, both had little permanent effect. The food crisis in the first decade of the 21st century has multiple causes, not the least of which is climate change. But that is not the cause: It is a concomitant, as Sen (1981) has argued. Newspapers and magazines detail the economic and political actions that seem paramount, and then a climate disaster hits and the crisis becomes full-blown. Australia, for example, has been suffering drought for over a decade, especially in its wheat-growing areas, but its economy can support basic food imports; Canada’s prairies were overwhelmed by a heat wave due to climate change, which reduced its 5-year production of wheat by over 3 million tons. Ironically, one of the major factors is that due to the Green Revolution, the health and diet of billions of people, in China and India in particular, has improved, but this has led to obesity (Popkin, 2008). Their demand for meat, which traditionally was an ingredient in a vegetable-based gravy over a staple, has escalated, and with it a shift from land producing for people to land producing for, especially, cattle. And, world over, the amount of arable land left has decreased from 0.42 hectares per person in 1961 to just about half this figure by the beginning of this century (as cited in Swaminathan, 2003).

Over the past two decades, the rise in the price of oil has caused an escalation of food prices, since transportation by ship, plane, or truck requires energy and global food markets require foodstuffs that once were kept local. Clearly another form of energy needed to be found, and the answer lay in the conversion of biomass to energy. The demand for biofuel, initially created from corn, kept acres out of food production and relegated them to energy manufacture. Currently the move is to find other sources of biomass— like algae, for example—to relieve the pressure on foodstuffs, and ultimately to use waste to create fuel. Then too, agglomeration of land into huge holdings has helped to make farming a business enterprise, subsidized by government and reflected in the market fluctuations in the prices of commodities, where 60% of the wheat trade, for example, is controlled by large investment corporations. The consequence has been that small farmers cannot compete with imports that are cheaper than what they can produce; production cannot compete with demand (IRRI, 2008). An even further result is scarcity in precisely those countries where the crops are grown, resulting in hoarding not only by individuals, but also by governments, for example, the ban on rice in India and Vietnam (IRRI, 2008).

Global organizations such as the G8 and the World Trade Organization (WTO), together with nongovernmental agencies, individual governments, think tanks, and institutes, are “closing the barn door after the horse has escaped” with a variety of stop-gap measures. At the same time, there are clear and significant countertrends occurring. Not the least of these, and perhaps the best established, is the organic movement, whose origins followed the introduction of vast petrochemical use in the 1940s. Since then, the movement has grown out of the “fringe” to become “established.” In the mid-1980s, supermarkets’ recognition of a substantial market for certified-organic produce and meat broadcast the knowledge of the health implications of additives (from MSG to nitrites).

Of course, advances in technology and science focus on ensuring that there will be sufficient food for future populations. Livestock require vast amounts of land to produce the food they eat. By the early 1970s, the calculation was that conversion of cow feed to meat produced amounts to only 15% (Whittaker, 1972), and cows eat prodigious amounts of food. The agriculture department of Colorado State University, for example, reckons a cow eats up to 25 pounds of grain, 30 pounds of hay, and 40 to 60 pounds of silage— per day. One way around this is the virtual “creation” of meat. The future will see the industrial manufacture of meat through tissue engineering (Edelman et al., 2005). Using principles currently devised for medical purposes, cultured meat may actually reduce environmental degradation (less livestock, less soil pollution) and ensure human health through control of kinds and amounts of fat, as well as bacteria. Given the growth of the world’s population, in order to maintain health levels, the current trend of creating, nurturing, and breeding neutraceuticals will be expanded. The Consultative Group on Agriculture Research’s (CGIAR) Harvest Plus Challenge Program is breeding vitamin and mineral dense staples: wheat, rice, maize, and cassava for the developing world (HarvestPlus, 2009). Similarly, the inclusion of zinc, iron, and vitamin A into plant foods is under way in breeding and GM projects. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) terms its efforts Agrosalud as it seeks to increase the food value of beans, especially with regard to iron and calcium content (AcostaGallegos et al., 2007).

There is a distinct interest in returning to victory gardens —those small, even tiny plots of land in urban environments that produced huge quantities of food in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada during World War II. By 1943, there were 20 million gardens using every available space: roofs of apartment buildings, vacant lots, and of course backyards. Together they produced 8 million tons of food (Levenstein, 2003). The beginnings of this movement are seen in the community gardens hosted in many cities, and in blogs and Web sites all over the Internet. Cities will also see the development of vertical farms —towering buildings growing all sorts of produce and even livestock. This idea, first promulgated by Dickson Despommier, a professor of microbiology at Columbia University, has quickly found adherents (Venkataraman, 2008). One project, proposed for completion by 2010, is a 30-story building in Las Vegas that will use hydroponic technology to grow a variety of produce. The idea of small plots, some buildings, and some arable land—in effect, a distribution of spaces to grow in—is consonant with the return to “small” and local: the hallmarks of the slow movement.

The future may see a return to local produce grown by small farmers, independent of the industrialized superfarms, utilizing nonhybridized crops from which seed can be stored. The small and local is part of the slow movement, which originated in Italy in the mid-1980s as a protest against fast food and what is associated with it. Its credo is to preserve a local ecoregion: its seeds, animals, and food plants, and thereby its cuisine (Petrini, 2003). It has grown into hundreds of chapters worldwide with a membership approaching 100,000 and has achieved this in only two decades. In concert with this movement is a new respect for, and cultivation of, traditional knowledge. The World Bank, for example, hosts a Web site on indigenous knowledge (Indigenous Knowledge Program, 2009) providing information ranging from traditional medicine, to farming techniques (e.g., composting, terracing, irrigating), to information technology and rural development.

The best example of small, local, and slow, along with exemplary restoration of indigenous knowledge, comes from Cuba. When the United States closed its doors to Cuba in the late 1950s, the Soviet Union became the chief supporter of Cuba, providing trade, material, and financial support. With the fall of communism, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Cuba could no longer rely on the imports of petrochemicals that had been traded for citrus and sugar and upon which agribusiness depended. Large-scale state farms therefore were broken into local cooperatives; industrial employees were encouraged to work on farms, or to produce gardens in the cities much like victory gardens. A change in the economic system, permitting small-scale farmers to sell their surplus, encouraged market gardening and financial independence. Oxen replaced tractors, and new “old” techniques of interplanting, crop rotation, and composting replaced petrochemicals. Universities found practitioners and taught traditional medicine and farming techniques. It may not be feasible for small and local to exist everywhere, yet the future will see some of each as expedience requires.

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Evans D, Coad J, Cottrell K, et al. Public involvement in research: assessing impact through a realist evaluation. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2014 Oct. (Health Services and Delivery Research, No. 2.36.)

Public involvement in research: assessing impact through a realist evaluation.

Chapter 9 conclusions and recommendations for future research.

• How well have we achieved our original aim and objectives?

The initially stated overarching aim of this research was to identify the contextual factors and mechanisms that are regularly associated with effective and cost-effective public involvement in research. While recognising the limitations of our analysis, we believe we have largely achieved this in our revised theory of public involvement in research set out in Chapter 8 . We have developed and tested this theory of public involvement in research in eight diverse case studies; this has highlighted important contextual factors, in particular PI leadership, which had not previously been prominent in the literature. We have identified how this critical contextual factor shapes key mechanisms of public involvement, including the identification of a senior lead for involvement, resource allocation for involvement and facilitation of research partners. These mechanisms then lead to specific outcomes in improving the quality of research, notably recruitment strategies and materials and data collection tools and methods. We have identified a ‘virtuous circle’ of feedback to research partners on their contribution leading to their improved confidence and motivation, which facilitates their continued contribution. Following feedback from the HS&DR Board on our original application we did not seek to assess the cost-effectiveness of different mechanisms of public involvement but we did cost the different types of public involvement as discussed in Chapter 7 . A key finding is that many research projects undercost public involvement.

In our original proposal we emphasised our desire to include case studies involving young people and families with children in the research process. We recruited two studies involving parents of young children aged under 5 years, and two projects involving ‘older’ young people in the 18- to 25-years age group. We recognise that in doing this we missed studies involving children and young people aged under 18 years; in principle we would have liked to have included studies involving such children and young people, but, given the resources at our disposal and the additional resource, ethical and governance issues this would have entailed, we regretfully concluded that this would not be feasible for our study. In terms of the four studies with parental and young persons’ involvement that we did include, we have not done a separate analysis of their data, but the themes emerging from those case studies were consistent with our other case studies and contributed to our overall analysis.

In terms of the initial objectives, we successfully recruited the sample of eight diverse case studies and collected and analysed data from them (objective 1). As intended, we identified the outcomes of involvement from multiple stakeholders‘ perspectives, although we did not get as many research partners‘ perspectives as we would have liked – see limitations below (objective 2). It was more difficult than expected to track the impact of public involvement from project inception through to completion (objective 3), as all of our projects turned out to have longer time scales than our own. Even to track involvement over a stage of a case study research project proved difficult, as the research usually did not fall into neatly staged time periods and one study had no involvement activity over the study period.

Nevertheless, we were able to track seven of the eight case studies prospectively and in real time over time periods of up to 9 months, giving us an unusual window on involvement processes that have previously mainly been observed retrospectively. We were successful in comparing the contextual factors, mechanisms and outcomes associated with public involvement from different stakeholders‘ perspectives and costing the different mechanisms for public involvement (objective 4). We only partly achieved our final objective of undertaking a consensus exercise among stakeholders to assess the merits of the realist evaluation approach and our approach to the measurement and valuation of economic costs of public involvement in research (objective 5). A final consensus event was held, where very useful discussion and amendment of our theory of public involvement took place, and the economic approach was discussed and helpfully critiqued by participants. However, as our earlier discussions developed more fully than expected, we decided to let them continue rather than interrupt them in order to run the final exercise to assess the merits of the realist evaluation approach. We did, however, test our analysis with all our case study participants by sending a draft of this final report for comment. We received a number of helpful comments and corrections but no disagreement with our overall analysis.

• What were the limitations of our study?

Realist evaluation is a relatively new approach and we recognise that there were a number of limitations to our study. We sought to follow the approach recommended by Pawson, but we acknowledge that we were not always able to do so. In particular, our theory of public involvement in research evolved over time and initially was not as tightly framed in terms of a testable hypothesis as Pawson recommends. In his latest book Pawson strongly recommends that outcomes should be measured with quantitative data, 17 but we did not do so; we were not aware of the existence of quantitative data or tools that would enable us to collect such data to answer our research questions. Even in terms of qualitative data, we did not capture as much information on outcomes as we initially envisaged. There were several reasons for this. The most important was that capturing outcomes in public involvement is easier the more operational the focus of involvement, and more difficult the more strategic the involvement. Thus, it was relatively easy to see the impact of a patient panel on the redesign of a recruitment leaflet but harder to capture the impact of research partners in a multidisciplinary team discussion of research design.

We also found it was sometimes more difficult to engage research partners as participants in our research than researchers or research managers. On reflection this is not surprising. Research partners are generally motivated to take part in research relevant to their lived experience of a health condition or situation, whereas our research was quite detached from their lived experience; in addition people had many constraints on their time, so getting involved in our research as well as their own was likely to be a burden too far for some. Researchers clearly also face significant time pressures but they had a more direct interest in our research, as they are obliged to engage with public involvement to satisfy research funders such as the NIHR. Moreover, researchers were being paid by their employers for their time during interviews with us, while research partners were not paid by us and usually not paid by their research teams. Whatever the reasons, we had less response from research partners than researchers or research managers, particularly for the third round of data collection; thus we have fewer data on outcomes from research partners‘ perspectives and we need to be aware of a possible selection bias towards more engaged research partners. Such a bias could have implications for our findings; for example payment might have been a more important motivating factor for less engaged advisory group members.

There were a number of practical difficulties we encountered. One challenge was when to recruit the case studies. We recruited four of our eight case studies prior to the full application, but this was more than 1 year before our project started and 15 months or more before data collection began. In this intervening period, we found that the time scales of some of the case studies were no longer ideal for our project and we faced the choice of whether to continue with them, although this timing was not ideal, or seek at a late moment to recruit alternative ones. One of our case studies ultimately undertook no involvement activity over the study period, so we obtained fewer data from it, and it contributed relatively little to our analysis. Similarly, one of the four case studies we recruited later experienced some delays itself in beginning and so we had a more limited period for data collection than initially envisaged. Research governance approvals took much longer than expected, particularly as we had to take three of our research partners, who were going to collect data within NHS projects, through the research passport process, which essentially truncated our data collection period from 1 year to 9 months. Even if we had had the full year initially envisaged for data collection, our conclusion with hindsight was that this was insufficiently long. To compare initial plans and intentions for involvement with the reality of what actually happened required a longer time period than a year for most of our case studies.

In the light of the importance we have placed on the commitment of PIs, there is an issue of potential selection bias in the recruitment of our sample. As our sampling strategy explicitly involved a networking approach to PIs of projects where we thought some significant public involvement was taking place, we were likely (as we did) to recruit enthusiasts and, at worst, those non-committed who were at least open to the potential value of public involvement. There were, unsurprisingly, no highly sceptical PIs in our sample. We have no data therefore on how public involvement may work in research where the PI is sceptical but may feel compelled to undertake involvement because of funder requirements or other factors.

• What would we do differently next time?

If we were to design this study again, there are a number of changes we would make. Most importantly we would go for a longer time period to be able to capture involvement through the whole research process from initial design through to dissemination. We would seek to recruit far more potential case studies in principle, so that we had greater choice of which to proceed with once our study began in earnest. We would include case studies from the application stage to capture the important early involvement of research partners in the initial design period. It might be preferable to research a smaller number of case studies, allowing a more in-depth ethnographic approach. Although challenging, it would be very informative to seek to sample sceptical PIs. This might require a brief screening exercise of a larger group of PIs on their attitudes to and experience of public involvement.

The economic evaluation was challenging in a number of ways, particularly in seeking to obtain completed resource logs from case study research partners. Having a 2-week data collection period was also problematic in a field such as public involvement, where activity may be very episodic and infrequent. Thus, collecting economic data alongside other case study data in a more integrated way, and particularly with interviews and more ethnographic observation of case study activities, might be advantageous. The new budgeting tool developed by INVOLVE and the MHRN may provide a useful resource for future economic evaluations. 23

We have learned much from the involvement of research partners in our research team and, although many aspects of our approach worked well, there are some things we would do differently in future. Even though we included substantial resources for research partner involvement in all aspects of our study, we underestimated how time-consuming such full involvement would be. We were perhaps overambitious in trying to ensure such full involvement with the number of research partners and the number and complexity of the case studies. We were also perhaps naive in expecting all the research partners to play the same role in the team; different research partners came with different experiences and skills, and, like most of our case studies, we might have been better to be less prescriptive and allow the roles to develop more organically within the project.

• Implications for research practice and funding

If one of the objectives of R&D policy is to increase the extent and effectiveness of public involvement in research, then a key implication of this research is the importance of influencing PIs to value public involvement in research or to delegate to other senior colleagues in leading on involvement in their research. Training is unlikely to be the key mechanism here; senior researchers are much more likely to be influenced by peers or by their personal experience of the benefits of public involvement. Early career researchers may be shaped by training but again peer learning and culture may be more influential. For those researchers sceptical or agnostic about public involvement, the requirement of funders is a key factor that is likely to make them engage with the involvement agenda. Therefore, funders need to scrutinise the track record of research teams on public involvement to ascertain whether there is any evidence of commitment or leadership on involvement.

One of the findings of the economic analysis was that PIs have consistently underestimated the costs of public involvement in their grant applications. Clearly the field will benefit from the guidance and budgeting tool recently disseminated by MHRN and INVOLVE. It was also notable that there was a degree of variation in the real costs of public involvement and that effective involvement is not necessarily costly. Different models of involvement incur different costs and researchers need to be made aware of the costs and benefits of these different options.

One methodological lesson we learned was the impact that conducting this research had on some participants’ reflection on the impact of public involvement. Particularly for research staff, the questions we asked sometimes made them reflect upon what they were doing and change aspects of their approach to involvement. Thus, the more the NIHR and other funders can build reporting, audit and other forms of evaluation on the impact of public involvement directly into their processes with PIs, the more likely such questioning might stimulate similar reflection.

• Recommendations for further research

There are a number of gaps in our knowledge around public involvement in research that follow from our findings, and would benefit from further research, including realist evaluation to extend and further test the theory we have developed here:

• In-depth exploration of how PIs become committed to public involvement and how to influence agnostic or sceptical PIs would be very helpful. Further research might compare, for example, training with peer-influencing strategies in engendering PI commitment. Research could explore the leadership role of other research team members, including research partners, and how collective leadership might support effective public involvement.
• More methodological work is needed on how to robustly capture the impact and outcomes of public involvement in research (building as well on the PiiAF work of Popay et al. 51 ), including further economic analysis and exploration of impact when research partners are integral to research teams.
• Research to develop approaches and carry out a full cost–benefit analysis of public involvement in research would be beneficial. Although methodologically challenging, it would be very useful to conduct some longer-term studies which sought to quantify the impact of public involvement on such key indicators as participant recruitment and retention in clinical trials.
• It would also be helpful to capture qualitatively the experiences and perspectives of research partners who have had mixed or negative experiences, since they may be less likely than enthusiasts to volunteer to participate in studies of involvement in research such as ours. Similarly, further research might explore the (relatively rare) experiences of marginalised and seldom-heard groups involved in research.
• Payment for public involvement in research remains a contested issue with strongly held positions for and against; it would be helpful to further explore the value research partners and researchers place on payment and its effectiveness for enhancing involvement in and impact on research.
• A final relatively narrow but important question that we identified after data collection had finished is: what is the impact of the long periods of relative non-involvement following initial periods of more intense involvement for research partners in some types of research, particularly clinical trials?

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• Cite this Page Evans D, Coad J, Cottrell K, et al. Public involvement in research: assessing impact through a realist evaluation. Southampton (UK): NIHR Journals Library; 2014 Oct. (Health Services and Delivery Research, No. 2.36.) Chapter 9, Conclusions and recommendations for future research.
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Sample Recommendations

By: Engr. Mary Rose Florence S. Cobar, Doctor of Philosophy in Education Thesis title: “Development of a Source Material in Food Dehydration Craft Technology for the Secondary Schools”

Recommendations After a thorough analysis of data, the following recommendations are hereby made:

• This research study suggests that education managers study diffusion theory for three reasons. First, education managers and instruction technologists’ do not know why most instructional innovations are or not adopted. Some blame teachers and a resistance to change while the others blamed bureaucracies and lack of funding. In the Philippine context, it’s more a case of lack in funding and political interference, but by and large, schools are commonly viewed as resistant to change. By studying diffusion theory, education managers may be able to explain, predict and account for factors that influence or impede adoption and diffusion of innovations in teaching methods. Therefore, understanding the best way to present innovations for possible adoption of a method is through communication channels. Third, education managers may be able to develop a systematic model for innovative methods in teaching not only the basic courses but in the Makabayan learning area which is one of the study area of this body of research, in simple terms:    INNOVATIVENESS = RESOURFULNESS + ADAPTABILITY
• Given that food dehydration in some aspects is a technological innovation, it is useful to apply the tenets of diffusion theory to understand food dehydration’s diffusion in the social system. Diffusion theory provides a framework that helps food dehydration adopted, to be explained, predicted and accounted to by factors that increase or impede the diffusion of innovation. Diffusion theory helps the teachers in the education community identify qualities,ie. relative advantage, compatibility, triability and observability to potential adopters. The diffusion framework also provides a closer look at the communication channels used to spread the word about food dehydration, time span and the characteristics of the adopters.
• To provide a compelling argument as to the reasons behind the actions of individuals as adopters of an innovation, this study recommends for further research in the actuations of the adopters through the use of the actor-network theory (ANT) perspective. Diffusion theory approach is more of the cause and effect of innovation while actor-network theory traces the maneuvers, compromises, twists and turns of a negotiation as it is translated during the process of adoption. The scope of an actor-network theory (ANT) analysis is to yield a broader understanding relative to the professional development of the teachers concerned or attributed to in this study. In context, diffusion theory posits an innovation (food dehydration) ought to be adopted to be able to be diffused through a system (secondary education), while an actor-network theory approach will be primarily concerned with tracing the complex and contingent factors involved in the overall innovation process and the contributory influence to the education sector.
• For the source material, an inclusion of setting up a small home-based enterprise of the family size unit and its system operation and management information. This entrepreneurial segment runs parallel to what the Department of Education and the government would or have implemented starting school year 2006-2007 in key pilot areas, that is, business management for students in the secondary school level to prepare them after graduation and beyond. In the food dehydration craft technology segment, the teachers apply the study of science and technology to that of business management and economics that can be diffused to the students by their teachers as a learning paradigm to prepare them options after secondary school.

In the food dehydration craft technology area of this research study, the recommendations to the new design conceived are the following:

a)    a built-in thermometer, hygrometer and psychrometer should be installed to monitor the conditions inside the dehydrator;

b)    an additional circuit system designed to control the voltage input to the heating element for a stable hot air supply;

c)    the material of construction to be used should be made of stainless steel so as not to oxidize the food being dried because the prototype unit made use of Aluminum which is not recommended for use in food like fruits having a high acid content;

d)    the blower fans to be used should be regulated as low, medium and high for better regulation of the relative humidity inside the drying chamber;

e)    if the prototype dehydrator has been built, experimentations should be done on a variety of foods to test its efficacy to deliver the desired output.

From the design simulation, the following materials of construction are needed:

Table 16. Table of Specifications

System Design

A system involving a small scale food dehydration enterprise requires minimal capital investment and technical and management skills. But changes due to market trends and to keep the business viable, managerial and technical skills are extremely important in any field where income generation is of primary importance, management knowledge is a must and that includes the teachers for whom this research study is attributed. In systems management, emphasis must be in integrating entrepreneurial technology, finance and marketing strategies instead of transfer of technique only and the most ignored factor, gut feel of the economic factors to be considered.

One thought to “Sample Recommendations”

Hi, very nice post. I have been wonder’n bout this issue,so thanks for posting

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