Designing Research for Impact: Part 2: ‘Identifying how stakeholders might use your research’

The following blog is second in a series of blogs by guest blogger, Hannah Clark, Impact Facilitator, University of Manchester, all looking at designing impact from research. 

Often, how stakeholders will primarily use your research will correlate directly to their interest in it and what unmet needs have led them to engage with your work in the first place. For example, if one of your stakeholders is a business, their interest in your work and their use for it will most likely be linked with a desire to make changes that benefit their workforce, their customers, or perhaps enhance their business growth or processes. Your research will provide the data that will allow them to make informed choices with a greater chance of success.

It is important to note that we do not always have full control of how stakeholders will use research once it is out in the world, and that can provide opportunities for further impact and greater research development than originally envisioned, and challenges around monitoring and reporting on the impact your work has had. Speaking to key stakeholders throughout the project design stage and ensuring that you are adapting to their feedback and reflecting on their priorities is key to being able to predict how they and other stakeholders with similar interests and needs will use your research.

Continuing with the example of a business, the graphic below provides some of the key benefits that may arise for a company and its customers/employees/structure from engaging with academic research.

Some of these impacts can be difficult to measure, and it is important to acknowledge this and formulate a plan of action to ensure that grant funders are confident of your ability to track and manage the results of your research.  

Generally speaking, of the three pillars of impact mentioned in the previous blog post: ‘behaviours, beliefs, and practices’ impact on people’s behaviours and practices is easier to turn into a comprehensive set of data. An example from the list above is ‘increasing productivity’. How productive employees are before and after an intervention can easily be measured and quantified over time. However, when we are talking about people’s wellbeing or the culture of a working environment, the changes and impacts that research have can be more difficult to measure. People’s perceptions, individual needs, and expectations can make gathering reliable qualitative data a little more difficult. That is not to say that this sort of impact is less valid, only that it is worth considering when you are planning for how a stakeholder might use your research. Where beliefs will likely be the primary impact, you may wish to work with your stakeholders to consider how you will monitor and evaluate the success of the intervention via data collection methods such as: 

• Before and after surveys 

• On-site observations 

• In-depth interviews 

• Focus groups  

A final note here: when writing a funding application, it is useful for reviewers to see exactly how you anticipate your research will be used by stakeholders to show that there is intentionality within your work, even if that later changes and develops alongside the project.  It is important to also show that you have considered what the stakeholders want and need from your research. Love them or hate them, a good old bullet pointed list can be incredibly helpful visually if you are trying to highlight aspects of potential impact in a clear and concise manner with a limited word count!