Toward a Broader View of Utilization: A Critical Review of the Literature on Utilization of Operations Research in Reproductive Health Programs

James Foreit
Celeste Marin, Academy for Educational Development (AED)
Karen Foreit

Encouraging health program managers to incorporate research findings into program operations is a priority of international organizations such as WHO and USAID. This paper reviews the literature on the use of operations research results by reproductive health programs and identifies conceptual, methodological and analytical obstacles to providing reliable guidelines for increasing the use of operations research results by reproductive health programs. The paper also argues for an improved conceptual framework and methodological techniques. The definition of utilization must be expanded to include both positive and negative research results, studies of utilization must be both prospective and retrospective, and the focus of utilization research must move beyond a simple enumeration of factors influencing the use of results to the identification of variables that discriminate between use and non-use, and that identify factors that can be manipulated to increase the likelihood of results utilization.