Towards measuring societal impact of research: Insights from an Irish case study

Abstract

Academic research is increasingly required to demonstrate economic and policy relevance, with this becoming a key metric by which the success of research projects are being judged. Furthermore, the active, as opposed to passive, participation of citizens in science is now encouraged through dissemination and outreach, using, for example, co-production techniques. These non-traditional academic impacts have become a key component of a number of funding agency calls, most notably the European Union’s research funding programme Horizon 2020. However, exactly how measurable these ‘impacts’ are, particularly social and policy impacts, is unclear as there is not an obvious metric. Additionally, there is no standardised approach to assessing research impact recognised in the social sciences. Using a case study which describes the experience of using public engagement seminars as a means to disseminate academic research to stakeholder communities, this article aims to develop an impact assessment strategy to measure societal impact applicable in the social sciences. Based on recommendations in the UK Research Excellence Framework, amongst other literature, we put forward three steps to better capture research ‘impact’ in a more meaningful way in future research projects: (i) establish the quality of the academic research, (ii) choose appropriate discipline-specific criteria for measuring societal impact and (iii) choose appropriate measurable indicators. Other useful insights include the difficulty of motivating public interest in topics that are no longer high profile or emotive, and hence the necessity to provide access to research findings as early as possible in the research cycle. The article concludes with a discussion of the difficulties of measuring ‘impact’ in a meaningful sense.