| Dimension | Conventional Research | Action-Oriented Research |
| Why we study | To create generalizable or fundamental knowledge that answers scientific questions | To create knowledge that can help identify, characterize, and solve practical problems of concern to stakeholders, organizations, communities, or publics at various scales |
| What we study (topics) | Nutrients, food and nutrient intake, consumer behavior, determinants and consequences of nutritional variation, efficacy of interventions | Food and nutrition issues, causes, and solutions in a broader social and action context, including food systems, social and public health programs and policies; processes of policy agenda setting, governance, development, implementation, scaling-up, and evaluation; and community and organizational behavior and change processes |
| Who we study (actors) | Mothers, infants, children, individuals, consumers, patients | Policy makers, analysts, managers, implementers, frontline workers in the public sector; global, national, state, and local leaders and members of communities, civil society organizations, universities, networks, and coalitions; global, national, state, and local private-sector actors and entities, citizens, academics |
| How we study: methods | Measurements of knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, behavior, biology, individual and environmental characteristics, and their interrelationships, using a limited range of quantitative and qualitative methods | More eclectic range of qualitative and quantitative methods to inquire into the new topics noted above, including mixed methods, social network analysis, discourse analysis, narrative policy analysis, Q methodology, process tracing, stakeholder analysis and influence mapping, program impact pathways, organizational ethnography, systems dynamics group modeling |
| How we study: approaches | Generally detached, objectivist, positivist, reductionist, behaviorist, hypothesis testing | More engaged, participatory, action research, community-based participatory research, participant-observer, reflection in action, embedded, critical, social construction, emergent, systems- and complexity-oriented |
| Disciplinary foundations | Nutritional sciences, epidemiology and biostatistics, biomedicine, psychology, social psychology, consumer behavior | Transdisciplinary, drawing upon our traditional disciplines but also with a greater role for economics, sociology, anthropology, policy analysis, law, urban planning, political science, organizational behavior, management sciences, and systems sciences |
↵a In many cases, the distinctions shown in this table are a matter of degree or emphasis rather than discrete categories. Individual studies or research programs may possess many or few of these characteristics, to a greater or lesser extent.
Reprinted and adapted with permission from Pelletier et al., 2013 in Advances in Nutrition.26 Copyright 2013 by American Society for Nutrition.