Research Impact II: It All Depends on the User Now
Photographs from the event will be available here soon.
On 14th January the Academy held a follow-up to its conference last July on assessing research impact. Over seventy people attended the event held at the Academy’s offices in Tabernacle Street, London, to listen to speakers and take part in lively and considered discussion.
A summary of the event is given here and the speaker presentations can be downloaded by clicking on the links. The delegate list can be downloaded here. Speaker biographies can be downloaded here.
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Barbara Doig AcSS, chaired the morning session, which looked at the different viewpoints involved in research.
Professor Paul Wiles, the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor spoke about what government expects from social science research and how the research community can help influence political thinking. He thanked the Academy for providing external pressure on government to pay heed to social science research and noted that, as government responds to pressure, the more external pressure placed on him in this respect, the better. He outlined the realities of getting social science research findings in front of ministers who have little time to read the quantity of information available and many other influences on their thinking; he noted the 1-3-25 rule whereby most ministers and policy officials will read no more than one page of information; if interested, they may read 3 pages; if very interested indeed, they might possibly read 25 pages. The rule is: get it down to one page with the required information clearly available, including clarity of causal effect, the likelihood of being able to scale up any initiative, a cost-benefit analysis and the potential level of impact. His job as scientific advisor is to turn a minister’s question into one that is answerable and he needs clear evidence to help him.
Fiona Armstrong of ESRC discussed the role of user engagement throughout the life of a project, put out a plea for ‘good news’ stories from ESRC funded research and noted the impact agendas of their new committees and board structure. She noted the ESRC’s search for excellence through impact and outlined ways in which impact could be understood and generated, as well as the new methods being developed to assess it. She stressed that dissemination does not equal impact, and the necessity of capturing evidence of application by users.
Sharon Witherspoon of the Nuffield Foundation gave the view of the funders and impressed upon the audience the diversity of users and the crucial importance of good quality research, noting that the worst outcome was a big impact from poor quality research. The role of the Academy and its equivalent organisations in particular, and of social scientists in general, in rapidly and efficiently challenging bad social science in the media was another key message: if the media aren’t given the real facts, bogus ones take over.
Professor Peter Alcock AcSS, director of the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC), rounded out the discussion, giving a researcher’s view of impact, explaining the structure and functioning of the TSRC in terms of engagement, dissemination and knowledge exchange. He underlined the importance in particular of managing user expectations of what is possible from research whilst recognising and respecting user priorities. He added that a Knowledge Exchange team had been built in as part of the research centre from the beginning of the project: a tactic encouraged earlier by Fiona Armstrong. The various types of collaboration and impact were also discussed.
Ceridwen Roberts AcSS introduced a number of case studies in the afternoon session. David Walker of the Audit Commission, Simon Briscoe of the Financial Times, and Professor Jacquie Burgess AcSS of the University of East Anglia all spoke about how they used research.
David Walker considered that “this remains an underinformed country despite the quality of its social science”, and expressed a desire to receive more information from the world of academic and social research. He felt that the 'impact mindset was not yet embedded in social research' and that the Audit Commission would benefit from being fed more information about research.
Simon Briscoe pleaded for good, well-founded stories from proper academic research: “research, if relevant and credible, available and topical, will get gobbled up,” and advised researchers to look out for opportunities to publicise their work ; for example, the FT publish regular supplements on a variety of issues and the calendar of forthcoming topics is available so that researchers can feed in their work. He gave many useful tips and guidelines for putting research outputs into the public domain.
Jacquie Burgess sounded a cautionary note following the particular experiences of the UEA climate researchers who had found themselves unexpectedly in the worldwide media spotlight. She also spoke about the REF pilot, in which her school is currently taking part, and the realities of co-production and how important it is to be aware of the different academic priorities of other disciplines with which you may be involved. She expressed some anxiety that, whilst the base of co-production is thought of as mutual co-operation mutually agreed upon, the pressures to demonstrate impact could lead it to become mutual coercion mutually agreed upon.
A wide ranging discussion followed during which delegates were able to share their own insights and experiences of user engagement and the generation of impact in particular. The speakers presentations give further information about their messages.
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End
The Academy welcomed around 150 delegates to its first conference on Research Impact on 16 July to hear views on why impact is important from the ESRC, HEFCE, government and academia with additional commentary on issues, methodologies and evidence. Read More....
