The purpose of this narrative literature review was to synthesize evidence that describes processes and conceptual models for assessing policy and practice impacts of public health research.
The primary focus of our study was to examine the policy and practice impacts of research that occur in the 'real world' after the research had concluded.
The first of these aforementioned studies examined impact of population health surveillance studies on obesity prevention policy and practice [ 34], while the second [ 36] examined the policy and practice impacts of intervention research funded through the NSW Health Promotion Demonstration Research Grants Scheme 2000 2006.
This reinforces that traditional indices of research impact and researchers' track record on publications and grants are not always an accurate guide to the policy and practice impacts of their research.
The review revealed that, where broader policy and practice impacts of research have been assessed in the literature, the vast majority of studies have relied on principal investigator interviews and/or peer review to assess impacts, instead of interviewing policymakers and other important end-users of research.
This review suggests that, to date, most primary studies of health research impacts have been small scale case studies or reviews of medical and health services research funding [ 27, 31, 35, 39, 41], with only two studies offering comprehensive assessments of the policy and practice impacts of public health research, with both focusing on prevention research in Australia.
A verification panel was established to review and assess the collated case study material, and provide an overall assessment of the policy and practice impact of each of the 15 projects.
An expert panel made up of 12 experienced intervention researchers from the fields of public health, health policy, and clinical medicine, 6 of whom were external to the project, was convened to review and assess the impact assessment summaries and provide an overall assessment of the policy and practice impact of each of study.
Data analysis involved thematic coding of interview data and triangulation with other data sources to produce case summaries of policy and practice impacts for each of the three survey years (1997, 2004, 2010).
Examining the relationship between three sustainable value dimensions and six sustainable lifestyle practices, impacts of three sustainable values on pro-environmentalism was revealed as highest explanation power, indicating 22 percentage of predictable power (R 2 = .224) (See Table 5).
