Objectives

DESCRIBE objectives are to build on the shared findings of previous impact research by exploring the need for an expanded understanding of the types of impact research activities may have:

  1. Review the current state of international literature around Impact and the evidencing of Impact
  2. Commission a High Profile Steering Group and engage critical friends
  3. Explore and incorporate existing understanding of impact with a broader, comprehensive and pragmatic ’nuanced’ understanding of impact taxonomy and types of evidence
  4. Engage, disseminate, propagate and advocate the above amongst stakeholders
  5. Identify and make specific and actionable recommendations
  6. Review the status quo and make recommendations for the technical infrastructure to support the above

Components of the project include:

  • Semi-structured Intervews with leading impact experts, professionals and academics spanning a wide range of research disciplines.
  • Meta-analysis and gap review based on the literature and incorporating both national and international methods and standards which we aim to publish towards the end of 2012 with an associated literature database. For more information see our documents library.
  • Fact-finding Workshop in Winter 2012 with 30 leading experts.
  • Final Project Report that will will provide suggestions on how we might consistently define, evidence and evaluate impact with the goal of feeding recommendations into systems development projects.
  • Dissemination Conference Spring 2012 an international one day conference in London to share findings.