0000328114 00000 n Throughout history, the activities of a university have been to provide both education and research, but the fundamental purpose of a university was perhaps described in the writings of mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1929). Perhaps, SROI indicates the desire to be able to demonstrate the monetary value of investment and impact by some organizations. A key concern here is that we could find that universities which can afford to employ either consultants or impact administrators will generate the best case studies. To evaluate impact, case studies were interrogated and verifiable indicators assessed to determine whether research had led to reciprocal engagement, adoption of research findings, or public value. 0000007223 00000 n The reasoning behind the move towards assessing research impact is undoubtedly complex, involving both political and socio-economic factors, but, nevertheless, we can differentiate between four primary purposes. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. The exploitation of research to provide impact occurs through a complex variety of processes, individuals, and organizations, and therefore, attributing the contribution made by a specific individual, piece of research, funding, strategy, or organization to an impact is not straight forward. This presents particular difficulties in research disciplines conducting basic research, such as pure mathematics, where the impact of research is unlikely to be foreseen. If this research is to be assessed alongside more applied research, it is important that we are able to at least determine the contribution of basic research. Consortia for Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information, for example, has put together a data dictionary with the aim of setting the standards for terminology used to describe impact and indicators that can be incorporated into systems internationally and seems to be building a certain momentum in this area. A very different approach known as Social Impact Assessment Methods for research and funding instruments through the study of Productive Interactions (SIAMPI) was developed from the Dutch project Evaluating Research in Context and has a central theme of capturing productive interactions between researchers and stakeholders by analysing the networks that evolve during research programmes (Spaapen and Drooge, 2011; Spaapen et al. Researchers were asked to evidence the economic, societal, environmental, and cultural impact of their research within broad categories, which were then verified by an expert panel (Duryea et al. 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. For more extensive reviews of the Payback Framework, see Davies et al. 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. What indicators, evidence, and impacts need to be captured within developing systems? Explain. Differences between these two assessments include the removal of indicators of esteem and the addition of assessment of socio-economic research impact. 2007; Nason et al. 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. % Table 1 summarizes some of the advantages and disadvantages of the case study approach. The inherent technical disparities between the two different software packages and the adjustment . Attempting to evaluate impact to justify expenditure, showcase our work, and inform future funding decisions will only prove to be a valuable use of time and resources if we can take measures to ensure that assessment attempts will not ultimately have a negative influence on the impact of our research. The growing trend for accountability within the university system is not limited to research and is mirrored in assessments of teaching quality, which now feed into evaluation of universities to ensure fee-paying students satisfaction. They risk being monetized or converted into a lowest common denominator in an attempt to compare the cost of a new theatre against that of a hospital. This raises the questions of whether UK business and industry should not invest in the research that will deliver them impacts and who will fund basic research if not the government? In putting together evidence for the REF, impact can be attributed to a specific piece of research if it made a distinctive contribution (REF2014 2011a). If knowledge exchange events could be captured, for example, electronically as they occur or automatically if flagged from an electronic calendar or a diary, then far more of these events could be recorded with relative ease. Clearly the impact of thalidomide would have been viewed very differently in the 1950s compared with the 1960s or today. The current definition of health, formulated by the WHO, is no longer adequate for dealing with the new challenges in health care systems. Not only are differences in segmentation algorithm, boundary definition, and tissue contrast a likely cause of the poor correlation , but also the two different software packages used in this study are not comparable from a technical point of view. Impact has become the term of choice in the UK for research influence beyond academia. Ideally, systems within universities internationally would be able to share data allowing direct comparisons, accurate storage of information developed in collaborations, and transfer of comparable data as researchers move between institutions. Definition of Evaluation by Different Authors Tuckman: Evaluation is a process wherein the parts, processes, or outcomes of a programme are examined to see whether they are satisfactory, particularly with reference to the stated objectives of the programme our own expectations, or our own standards of excellence. Muffat says - "Evaluation is a continuous process and is concerned with than the formal academic achievement of pupils. These case studies were reviewed by expert panels and, as with the RQF, they found that it was possible to assess impact and develop impact profiles using the case study approach (REF2014 2010). 2009; Russell Group 2009). 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. It is concerned with both the evaluation of achievement and its enhancement. From the outset, we note that the understanding of the term impact differs between users and audiences. Key features of the adapted criteria . Figure 2 demonstrates the information that systems will need to capture and link. 2007). (2008), and Hanney and Gonzlez-Block (2011). What are the challenges associated with understanding and evaluating research impact? 0000001862 00000 n 2007) who concluded that the researchers and case studies could provide enough qualitative and quantitative evidence for reviewers to assess the impact arising from their research (Duryea et al. 0000002318 00000 n trailer << /Size 97 /Info 56 0 R /Root 61 0 R /Prev 396309 /ID[<8e25eff8b2a14de14f726c982689692f><7a12c7ae849dc37acf9c7481d18bb8c5>] >> startxref 0 %%EOF 61 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 55 0 R /Metadata 57 0 R /AcroForm 62 0 R >> endobj 62 0 obj << /Fields [ ] /DR << /Font << /ZaDb 38 0 R /Helv 39 0 R >> /Encoding << /PDFDocEncoding 40 0 R >> >> /DA (/Helv 0 Tf 0 g ) >> endobj 95 0 obj << /S 414 /T 529 /V 585 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 96 0 R >> stream Studies (Buxton, Hanney and Jones 2004) into the economic gains from biomedical and health sciences determined that different methodologies provide different ways of considering economic benefits. Measurement assessment and evaluation helps the teachers to determine the learning progress of the students. The case study does present evidence from a particular perspective and may need to be adapted for use with different stakeholders. 10312. These sometimes dissim- ilar views are due to the varied training and background of the writers in terms of their profession, concerned with different aspects of the education process. 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). Productive interactions, which can perhaps be viewed as instances of knowledge exchange, are widely valued and supported internationally as mechanisms for enabling impact and are often supported financially for example by Canadas Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, which aims to support knowledge exchange (financially) with a view to enabling long-term impact. Without measuring and evaluating their performance, teachers will not be able to determine how much the students have learned. working paper). x[s)TyjwI BBU*5,}~O#{4>[n?_?]ouO{~oW_~fvZ}sCy"n?wmiY{]9LXn!v^CkWIRp&TJL9o6CjjvWqAQ6:hU.Q-%R_O:k_v3^=79k{8s7?=`|S^BM-_fa@Q`nD_(]/]Y>@+no/>$}oMI2IdMqH,'f'mxlfBM?.WIn4_Jc:K31vl\wLs];k(vo_Teq9w2^&Ca*t;[.ybfYYvcn 2009). %PDF-1.3 Where quantitative data were available, for example, audience numbers or book sales, these numbers rarely reflected the degree of impact, as no context or baseline was available. From an international perspective, this represents a step change in the comprehensive nature to which impact will be assessed within universities and research institutes, incorporating impact from across all research disciplines. Concerns over how to attribute impacts have been raised many times (The Allen Consulting Group 2005; Duryea et al. 2007). Attempts have been made to categorize impact evidence and data, for example, the aim of the MICE Project was to develop a set of impact indicators to enable impact to be fed into a based system. 0000011585 00000 n Collecting this type of evidence is time-consuming, and again, it can be difficult to gather the required evidence retrospectively when, for example, the appropriate user group might have dispersed. The basic purpose of both measurement assessment and evaluation is to determine the needs of all the learners. In this sense, when reading an opinion piece, you must decide if you agree or disagree with the writer by making an informed judgment. 0000003495 00000 n 0000008241 00000 n Muffat says - "Evaluation is a continuous process and is concerned with than the formal academic achievement of pupils. Decker et al. Overview of the types of information that systems need to capture and link. (2005), Wooding et al. 0000002868 00000 n The REF will therefore assess three aspects of research: Research impact is assessed in two formats, first, through an impact template that describes the approach to enabling impact within a unit of assessment, and second, using impact case studies that describe the impact taking place following excellent research within a unit of assessment (REF2014 2011a). 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. 2005; Wooding et al. 0000004731 00000 n Scriven (2007:2) synthesised the definition of evaluation which appears in most dictionaries and the professional literature, and defined evaluation as "the process of determining merit, worth, or significance; an evaluation is a product of that process." . Wooding et al. Thalidomide has since been found to have beneficial effects in the treatment of certain types of cancer. 60 0 obj << /Linearized 1 /O 63 /H [ 1325 558 ] /L 397637 /E 348326 /N 12 /T 396319 >> endobj xref 60 37 0000000016 00000 n 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? In education, the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students. 2007). These traditional bibliometric techniques can be regarded as giving only a partial picture of full impact (Bornmann and Marx 2013) with no link to causality. Worth refers to extrinsic value to those outside the . RAND selected four frameworks to represent the international arena (Grant et al. 0000002109 00000 n The Economic and Social Benefits of HRB-funded Research, Measuring the Economic and Social Impact of the Arts: A Review, Research Excellence Framework Impact Pilot Exercise: Findings of the Expert Panels, Assessment Framework and Guidance on Submissions, Research Impact Evaluation, a Wider Context. In the Brunel model, depth refers to the degree to which the research has influenced or caused change, whereas spread refers to the extent to which the change has occurred and influenced end users.

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