Comprendre l'Utilisation de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales par les Organisations de la Societe Civile: la Leçon Marocaine

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the factors explaining the use of social science research by the development NGOs. To achieve this, we adopted an analytical approach by highlighting the results of a survey of 92 Moroccan NGOs operating in the field of economic development. The analysis of the data allowed us to identify a number of strong results. Thus, contrary to a widely shared idea in the academic community, the gap between research priorities and needs expressed by civil society is not clearly visible. Although the majority of development NGOs is still young and that the material conditions of researchers are generally unfavorable, there are enormous opportunities for dialogue, exchange and cooperation between the two communities. Also, the use of social science research is generally satisfactory. The construction of a PLS model suggests that this variable is strongly associated with three characteristics of the president of the NGO (seniority, position held and level of training), to only one feature of the NGO (the appreciation of instrumental research), and three characteristics of the context (relational proximity, assimilation effort, and diffusion mechanisms of research).