Technical communicators and their use of research: findings of a case study

This paper discusses research utilization among Finnish technical communicators. It is often argued that practitioners need and are only interested in instructional "how-to " information, but there is scarce empirical evidence to support these arguments. The paper presents the findings of a case study to support the view that research utilization is in fact a more complex phenomenon than it is often thought to be. We can find three research utilization models to describe the use of research among technical communicators: the enlightenment model, the interactive model, and the problem-solving model.