mpediments to Successful U niversity - ndustry Research Relationships

;\ PORTION of the research for my recently Dcompleted doctoral dissertation consisted of a questionnaire directed to 80 vice presidents (or directors) ofresearch in industry and 78 people occupying as similar a role as I could find at the campuses of the 48 United States members of the Association of American Universities. The questionnaire set forth a list of 15 assorted impediments to university-industry research relationships synthesized from an earlier historical review. I asked the respondents to rate each of the impediments as to how significant they perceived that factor to be in obstructing university-industry relationships, and to list and rate the significance of any they felt I had omitted. I also asked them to respond to a number of "yes/no/no opinion" questions designed to elicit their thoughts on, first, where we ought to go from here and what we ought to do about some of these impediments; second, what effect certain relatively recent developments may have had on the ease or difficulty of entering into research agreements; and, third, how relationships were currently faring between universities and industries. In several cases I asked them to state reasons for their yes or no answers. Out of all this I hoped to verify a list of genuinely significant impediments and, more importantly, to find out which were most significant