Presentation from the popular Fast Track Impact training on how to evaluate and prove impact claims from your research. Find our more at www.fasttrackimpact.com/resources

2. Evidencing impact

3. Read and discuss
 Evaluation:
 Track indicators/milestones identified in
your impact plan
 Design a more sophisticated evaluation to
establish whether you had impact
 Think about it early in case you need
before/after comparison etc.
 Monitoring:
 Opportunistically capture impacts as they
arise, whether expected or unexpected…
You need to do two things…

4. Read and discussMonitoring impact
 Find a way to continually track your
impacts easily to take the pain out of
reporting:
 Email impacts/evidence to yourself and file
 Ring binder/scrap book
 Evernote: enable team members from any
institution to collate impacts in a shared
notebook without having to log into
anything…

11. www.fasttrackimpact.com/evernote

12.  The process of assessing the significance and
reach of both positive and negative effects of
research
 Your task is to identify causal links between:
 Research (cause)
 Impact (effect)
 To create an evidence-based argument that
your research was sufficient or necessary to
generate the claimed impact
Evaluating ImpactWhat is impact evaluation?

13.  Entry level evaluation: use common sense to
assess milestones and indicators (establishing
baselines as necessary)
Evaluating ImpactEvaluating impact

14. Howtoevaluate?
Reed et al. (in press)
Evidencing research impact : a
methodological framework.
Research Policy

15. Howtoevaluate?
Reed et al. (in press)
Evidencing research impact : a
methodological framework.
Research Policy

16.  Evaluation design = research design
 Get win-wins for your research by asking “what’s
my impact” as a research question and identifying
methods already in your toolkit
 Get targeted help when there’s a tool missing
 Be proportionate
 Do parts of your design e.g. online survey,
interview
 Rigour from triangulation
 Get feedback, plugging gaps till it is believable
 Wait till you can do full design for high risk impacts
Evaluating ImpactHow to evaluate

17. www.fasttrackimpact.com/resources

18. www.fasttrackimpact.com
@fasttrackimpact