Table 3.

Two main concepts of research use.

Concept of research utilization		Description
Types of research utilization [6,22,32,39,40]	Instrumental	When research is acted upon in specific and direct ways, i.e. to solve a problem at hand
	Conceptual	Contributing to improved understanding of the subject matter, related problems, more general and indirect form of enlightenment
	Symbolic	Justify a position or course of action for reasons that have nothing to do with the research findings (political use) or use the fact that research is being done to justify inaction on other fronts (tactical use)
Ladder of research utilization [13,31,54]	1. Reception	Research results are received by actors
	2. Cognition	Research results are read and understood
	3. Reference	Research results change a way of thinking by actors
	4. Effort	Efforts are made to get the research results into policy even when this was not successful
	5. Adoption	Research results has direct influence not only on the policy process but on the context of the policy
	6. Implementation	Research results not only has been used for policy formulation but also translated into practice
	7. Impact	This refers to successful implemented policy initiated by research results.