What are the reasons behind trying to understand and evaluate research impact? Impact is assessed alongside research outputs and environment to provide an evaluation of research taking place within an institution. Explain. It has been acknowledged that outstanding leaps forward in knowledge and understanding come from immersing in a background of intellectual thinking that one is able to see further by standing on the shoulders of giants. Over the past year, there have been a number of new posts created within universities, such as writing impact case studies, and a number of companies are now offering this as a contract service. Assessment for Learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and. To be considered for inclusion within the REF, impact must be underpinned by research that took place between 1 January 1993 and 31 December 2013, with impact occurring during an assessment window from 1 January 2008 to 31 July 2013. Evaluation is a procedure that reviews a program critically. It is time-intensive to both assimilate and review case studies and we therefore need to ensure that the resources required for this type of evaluation are justified by the knowledge gained. In this sense, when reading an opinion piece, you must decide if you agree or disagree with the writer by making an informed judgment. Such a framework should be not linear but recursive, including elements from contextual environments that influence and/or interact with various aspects of the system. 0000008591 00000 n 0000001862 00000 n Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. Although it can be envisaged that the range of impacts derived from research of different disciplines are likely to vary, one might question whether it makes sense to compare impacts within disciplines when the range of impact can vary enormously, for example, from business development to cultural changes or saving lives? 0000012122 00000 n working paper). The first attempt globally to comprehensively capture the socio-economic impact of research across all disciplines was undertaken for the Australian Research Quality Framework (RQF), using a case study approach. 0000348082 00000 n In the educational context, the . The book also explores how different aspects of citizenship, such as attitudes towards diverse population groups and concerns for social issues, relate to classical definitions of norm-based citizenship from the political sciences. 0000010499 00000 n There are areas of basic research where the impacts are so far removed from the research or are impractical to demonstrate; in these cases, it might be prudent to accept the limitations of impact assessment, and provide the potential for exclusion in appropriate circumstances. Clearly there is the possibility that the potential new drug will fail at any one of these phases but each phase can be classed as an interim impact of the original discovery work on route to the delivery of health benefits, but the time at which an impact assessment takes place will influence the degree of impact that has taken place. These . SROI aims to provide a valuation of the broader social, environmental, and economic impacts, providing a metric that can be used for demonstration of worth. 3. 0000001325 00000 n It is very important to make sure people who have contributed to a paper, are given credit as authors. different meanings for different people in many different contexts. Perhaps it is time for a generic guide based on types of impact rather than research discipline? Assessment refers to a related series of measures used to determine a complex attribute of an individual or group of individuals. Assessment is the process of gathering and discussing information from multiple and diverse sources in order to develop a deep understanding of what students know, understand, and can do with their knowledge as a result of their educational experiences; the process culminates when assessment results are used to improve subsequent learning. A taxonomy of impact categories was then produced onto which impact could be mapped. The definition of health is not just a theoretical issue, because it has many implications for practice, policy, and health services. HEFCE developed an initial methodology that was then tested through a pilot exercise. In terms of research impact, organizations and stakeholders may be interested in specific aspects of impact, dependent on their focus. 0000007223 00000 n The current definition of health, formulated by the WHO, is no longer adequate for dealing with the new challenges in health care systems. This presents particular difficulties in research disciplines conducting basic research, such as pure mathematics, where the impact of research is unlikely to be foreseen. The risk of relying on narratives to assess impact is that they often lack the evidence required to judge whether the research and impact are linked appropriately. It is acknowledged in the article by Mugabushaka and Papazoglou (2012) that it will take years to fully incorporate the impacts of ERC funding. Any tool for impact evaluation needs to be flexible, such that it enables access to impact data for a variety of purposes (Scoble et al. 0000007777 00000 n Professor James Ladyman, at the University of Bristol, a vocal adversary of awarding funding based on the assessment of research impact, has been quoted as saying that inclusion of impact in the REF will create selection pressure, promoting academic research that has more direct economic impact or which is easier to explain to the public (Corbyn 2009). (2007) adapted the terminology of the Payback Framework, developed for the health and biomedical sciences from benefit to impact when modifying the framework for the social sciences, arguing that the positive or negative nature of a change was subjective and can also change with time, as has commonly been highlighted with the drug thalidomide, which was introduced in the 1950s to help with, among other things, morning sickness but due to teratogenic effects, which resulted in birth defects, was withdrawn in the early 1960s. 2008; CAHS 2009; Spaapen et al. Narratives can be used to describe impact; the use of narratives enables a story to be told and the impact to be placed in context and can make good use of qualitative information. Also called evaluative writing, evaluative essay or report, and critical evaluation essay . only one author attempts to define evaluation. 2005). To understand the socio-economic value of research and subsequently inform funding decisions. 0000008241 00000 n RAND Europe, Capturing Research Impacts. We will focus attention towards generating results that enable boxes to be ticked rather than delivering real value for money and innovative research. 4. Husbands-Fealing suggests that to assist identification of causality for impact assessment, it is useful to develop a theoretical framework to map the actors, activities, linkages, outputs, and impacts within the system under evaluation, which shows how later phases result from earlier ones. If impact is short-lived and has come and gone within an assessment period, how will it be viewed and considered? This might include the citation of a piece of research in policy documents or reference to a piece of research being cited within the media. Impact has become the term of choice in the UK for research influence beyond academia. One notable definition is provided by Scriven (1991) and later adopted by the American Evaluation Association (): "Evaluation is the systematic process to determine merit, worth, value, or . There is a distinction between academic impact understood as the intellectual contribution to ones field of study within academia and external socio-economic impact beyond academia. 2010; Hanney and Gonzlez-Block 2011) and can be thought of in two parts: a model that allows the research and subsequent dissemination process to be broken into specific components within which the benefits of research can be studied, and second, a multi-dimensional classification scheme into which the various outputs, outcomes, and impacts can be placed (Hanney and Gonzalez Block 2011). It is a process that involves careful gathering and evaluating of data on the actions, features, and consequences of a program. Capturing knowledge exchange events would greatly assist the linking of research with impact. Aspects of impact, such as value of Intellectual Property, are currently recorded by universities in the UK through their Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey return to Higher Education Statistics Agency; however, as with other public and charitable sector organizations, showcasing impact is an important part of attracting and retaining donors and support (Kelly and McNicoll 2011). The range and diversity of frameworks developed reflect the variation in purpose of evaluation including the stakeholders for whom the assessment takes place, along with the type of impact and evidence anticipated. A discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of a range of evaluation tools (bibliometrics, economic rate of return, peer review, case study, logic modelling, and benchmarking) can be found in the article by Grant (2006). The process of evaluation is dynamic and ongoing. %PDF-1.3 Metrics in themselves cannot convey the full impact; however, they are often viewed as powerful and unequivocal forms of evidence. In endeavouring to assess or evaluate impact, a number of difficulties emerge and these may be specific to certain types of impact. The aim of this study was to assess the accuracy of 3D rendering of the mandibular condylar region obtained from different semi-automatic segmentation methodology. The term "assessment" may be defined in multiple ways by different individuals or institutions, perhaps with different goals. Without measuring and evaluating their performance, teachers will not be able to determine how much the students have learned. Classroom Assessment -- (sometime referred to as Course-based Assessment) - is a process of gathering data on student learning during the educational experience, designed to help the instructor determine which concepts or skills the students are not learning well, so that steps may be taken to improve the students' learning while the course is Understanding what impact looks like across the various strands of research and the variety of indicators and proxies used to evidence impact will be important to developing a meaningful assessment. One way in which change of opinion and user perceptions can be evidenced is by gathering of stakeholder and user testimonies or undertaking surveys. Any person who has made a significant . (2006) on the impact arising from health research. It is now possible to use data-mining tools to extract specific data from narratives or unstructured data (Mugabushaka and Papazoglou 2012). However, it must be remembered that in the case of the UK REF, impact is only considered that is based on research that has taken place within the institution submitting the case study. 0000334683 00000 n In demonstrating research impact, we can provide accountability upwards to funders and downwards to users on a project and strategic basis (Kelly and McNicoll 2011). It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. What emerged on testing the MICE taxonomy (Cooke and Nadim 2011), by mapping impacts from case studies, was that detailed categorization of impact was found to be too prescriptive. This is being done for collation of academic impact and outputs, for example, Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools, which uses PubMed and text mining to cluster research projects, and STAR Metrics in the US, which uses administrative records and research outputs and is also being implemented by the ERC using data in the public domain (Mugabushaka and Papazoglou 2012). The criteria for assessment were also supported by a model developed by Brunel for measurement of impact that used similar measures defined as depth and spread. For example, the development of a spin out can take place in a very short period, whereas it took around 30 years from the discovery of DNA before technology was developed to enable DNA fingerprinting. In the UK, more sophisticated assessments of impact incorporating wider socio-economic benefits were first investigated within the fields of Biomedical and Health Sciences (Grant 2006), an area of research that wanted to be able to justify the significant investment it received. evaluation of these different kinds of evaluands. At least, this is the function which it should perform for society. To demonstrate to government, stakeholders, and the wider public the value of research. The development of tools and systems for assisting with impact evaluation would be very valuable. For example, following the discovery of a new potential drug, preclinical work is required, followed by Phase 1, 2, and 3 trials, and then regulatory approval is granted before the drug is used to deliver potential health benefits. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 10312. There has been a drive from the UK government through Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Research Councils (HM Treasury 2004) to account for the spending of public money by demonstrating the value of research to tax payers, voters, and the public in terms of socio-economic benefits (European Science Foundation 2009), in effect, justifying this expenditure (Davies Nutley, and Walter 2005; Hanney and Gonzlez-Block 2011).
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