Table 1 Illustrative quotes regarding policy agency-initiated partnerships

Agency best placed to identify critical real-world issues

“I feel like the agency’s good at identifying the problem and that’s often unknown to researcher. They’re just not in the trenches. They just kind of can’t see it.” Researcher

Stepping stone to future collaborations

“…it’s a long game, these relationships. Doing the work that they’re commissioning but also with a view to potentially collaborating with them on bigger things that we might potentially have an interest in, in the future.” Researcher

Opportunity cost

“I have a research team of people who are ambitious… In an ideal world they’ll be doing projects which are targeting high impact, international journals. The sort of work that we do for government here isn’t that sort of work. So, it does come at that cost as well.” Researcher

Researchers not engaging with complexity

“Sometimes they get very narrow in terms of what they get interested in or they need to define things in a very narrow way that means that they can measure it, so it makes it easier for them, but it doesn’t necessarily answer the questions that you want. When from our point of view we’ll think, they’re just not even trying to get how complex, they just want it to be simple because that’s their area of expertise.” Research user

Evidence generated more likely to be used in policy or practice

“I think if they’ve got a specific evidence need and know the evidence they need to gather or synthesise to answer it, I think that’s quite an acceptable process that will probably lead to really quick translation because they need the evidence and as soon as they get it, they’ll make the decision on its basis.” Researcher

Changing political environment

“So honestly my best work was dead in the water within six months because of politics.” Researcher