Universities worldwide exist to generate new knowledge through research endeavours of their departments and laboratories. The generation and dissemination of new knowledge led to socio-economic development and high-performance indicators. The countries which want to evolve as knowledge economies should focus on creating, disseminating and preserving knowledge. The three components of sustainable development – environmental, economic and social are accelerated by the research activities of any country (Sisa et al 2020). Universities are enablers of a global knowledge economy. The social science research has improved during 2015-2020 and research publications have gone up by 140% during this period, from 10,500 in 2015 to 25,811 in October 2020 (The Mint, 2021 livemint.com).

The higher education system of India comprises 45 centrally funded, 318 states-funded, 185 state private universities, 129 deemed universities, and 51 institutions of national importance. Further, there are more than 37,000 colleges affiliated with universities in India.

It is important to know that the findings and recommendations which are given in the doctoral theses are just submitted and relegated to oblivion after the student is awarded doctoral degree or they have some public policy implications.

Weiss (1979) gave seven models of use of research, knowledge-driven model, problem-solving model, interactive model, tactical model, enlightenment model, research as part of the intellectual enterprise of society. It is important to understand these models to increase the use of their research findings in policymaking. The research in social science has the potential to provide credible, reliable, and usable solutions to social problems like conflict, social inequality, and exclusion. The social science disciplines generate diverse forms of research utilization.

Cherney et al. (2013) compared five disciplines of social sciences- education, economics, sociology, political science, and psychology to examine factors that influence perceptions of policy uptake of social science research. The study showed that disciplinary and methodological contexts influence the translation, dissemination, and utilization of academic social science research. The studies have highlighted that the social science research methods and theories need to be used in implementation science in global health and energy research (Van Belle et al., 2017; Stem, 2017).

Bogenschneider, Day, and Bogenschneider (2021) interviewed 123 legislators, 24 legislators nominated by colleagues, and 13 informants to investigate how they used to research for framing youth and family policies. They felt that youth and families deserved special support and research outputs were important, especially evidence on economic feasibility. But they were also concerned about the objectivity and credibility of conflicting research results. The study suggested that the researchers might get easy acceptance for their findings by incorporating real-life illustrations in their research. There are many obstacles in changing research results into practice like evidence inaccessibility, lack of implementation guidelines, absence of clear communication strategy, and lack of relevance for decision making (Dagenais, 2021).

Knowledge utilization depends more upon the behaviour of the researchers’ context than on the research products. The important factors which determine the utilization are ways of linking researchers to the users, dissemination, and adaptation of the research outputs and the publications of the researchers. The research output in professional social sciences like social work and industrial relations is used more than the research findings of disciplinary social sciences like economics, political sciences, sociology, and anthropology (Landry, et al, 2001).

The project will provide inputs to the administrators and policymakers in developing public policies to the administrators and policymakers in developing policies to address the challenges faced by Indian society. The final report of this project may have policy implications. The findings and recommendations of the social science research may be used by the government for developing public policies which may be implemented for the welfare of the citizens and society as a whole.

Further, the areas which have been followed and researched very vigorously and have reached a saturation point will be highlighted. Likewise, the research areas which have not received adequate attention may be encouraged. The government departments and ministries may grant funds for researching neglected subject areas. This will result in balanced research growth on the different aspects of social problems and challenges.