Session Information
23 SES 06 C, Politics of Curriculum
Paper Session
Contribution
Assessing and demonstrating the impact of funded university research has become a key aspect of European research policy in recent times. Researchers are subject to many requirements to assess and demonstrate the impact of their work, in a variety of contexts (Oancea, 2007; Davies et al, 2005), from that of funding decisions for research programmes and projects (many European and national funding schemes include such a requirement), to that of the assessment of universities’ overall performance (such as the case of the forthcoming UK Research Excellence Framework, which will include a sizeable component focusing on “impact” – Oancea, 2010; HEFCE, 2010).
The paper will present findings from a research project initiated in 2009 and completed in 2011 in the UK (with support from the Higher Education Innovation Fund). The study attempted to illuminate some of the complexities involved in conceptualising, assessing and demonstrating impact at institutional and research programme/project level. In particular, it looked at strategies and tools for demonstrating and assessing impact and at how they were embedded in the various interactions surrounding research projects.
The main questions addressed were:
· What interpretations and practices do those engaged in university-based publicly-funded research deploy in framing, assessing, and demonstrating research impact in four groups of disciplines (humanities; medical sciences; mathematical, physical, & life sciences; and social sciences, including education)?
· How well are these interpretations and practices captured by funders’ current approaches to assessing research impact?
The project reviewed international evidence, from European countries as well as from non-European Anglophone countries (see e.g. Grant et al, 2010; Levitt et al, 2010), and developed a conceptual framework that was then used to inform an empirical exploration of the UK context (please see the methodology section for details).
The aims of the study included:
1. Developing narratives of practice: constructing, in collaboration with researchers, users, and other stakeholders, narrative accounts of different approaches in a range of disciplines to facilitating, assessing, and demonstrating impact (academic and non-academic) of publicly-funded research.
2. Identifying commonalities of interpretation and practice: understanding researchers’ definitions of “impact” and interpretations of the need for, and the contexts of, demonstrating research impact in their different disciplines; unpacking their decisions about building strategies for impact into different types of research projects or programmes and at different stages of the research cycle; and exploring their views on impact measurement, impact indicators, and metrics.
3. Developing tools for capturing and demonstrating the value and impact of publicly-funded research that may inform further research and/or practice in the field.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Davies, H., Nutley, S. and Walter, I. (2005) Approaches to assessing the non-academic impact of social science research. Report of an ESRC symposium on assessing the non-academic impact of research, 12th/13th May 2005. Grant, J., Brutscher, P-B., Kirk, S.E., Butler, L., Wooding, S. (2010), "Capturing research impacts. A review of international practice", RAND Europe. HEFCE (2010) REF Research Impact Pilot Exercise Lessons-Learned Project Feedback on Pilot Submissions. HEFCE. Levitt, R., Celia, C., Diepeveen, S., Chonaill, N., Rabinovich, L., Tiessen, J. (2010) Assessing the impact of arts and humanities research at the University of Cambridge. RAND. Oancea A. (2007) From Procrustes to Proteus: Trends and practices in the assessment of education research. In: International Journal for Research Methods in Education, 30(3), pp. 243-269. Oancea, A. (2010) The BERA / UCET Review of the Impacts of RAE 2008 on Education Research in UK Higher Education Institutions. Written with advice from J. Furlong and D. Bridges. Macclesfield: UCET/BERA.
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