Staff members of a state literary resource center surveyed their practitioner clients to determine how they viewed research and the kinds of uses they made of it. Mail surveys were sent to all of the 404 adult education and English as a second language program directors in the state, and followup telephone interviews were conducted with 16 of the 143 respondents. Sixty-six percent of respondents were involved in instruction, while 34% were involved in administration; 37% had training in research while 49% were interested in further research and education in adult literacy; and research consumption among them was frequent but not particularly extensive. Some of the results are as follows: 66% of respondents indicated that they had changed a practice as a result of research-based information; practitioners assessed the value of research by source credibility, relevance and applicability, similarity of setting, quality of research design, and whether the reader agreed with the conclusions; more experienced practitioners read more research and more fully integrated it into their practice; there was no significant correlation between practitioners' levels of education, ethnicities, or genders and their relationship to research; and when practitioners view research as useful and relevant they are more likely to have recently made a change based on it. (Includes 9 references.) (MO)