Through historical analysis of the interaction between societal issues, end-user needs and research advances this paper intends to reveal the differences in perception about the usefulness and effectiveness of coastal research that appear to develop during subsequent research programme stages between different stakeholders. These perception differences are the probable reason for the limited scales of lifetime of research programmes. Our historical analysis indicates that both the assessment of the initial contents and the process of research programmes nearly by default lead to a growing divergence between drives and users of knowledge and developers of knowledge. Making use of these findings a methodology is suggested to avoid or at least postpone this divergence. This might lead to more useful and more effective research programmes with a longer lifetime to the benefit of society, end-users and researchers.