Edward Nason

Assessing policy and practice impacts of social science research: the application of the Payback Framework to assess the Future of Work programme

The UK Economic and Social Research Council funded exploratory evaluation studies to assess the wider impacts on society of various examples of its research. The Payback Framework is a conceptual approach previously used to evaluate impacts from health research. We tested its applicability to social sciences by using an adapted version to assess the impacts of the Future of Work (FoW) programme. We undertook key informant interviews, a programme-wide survey, user interviews and four case studies of selected projects. The FoW programme had significant impacts on knowledge, research and career development. While some principal investigators (PIs) could identify specific impacts of their research, PIs generally thought they had influenced policy in an incremental way and informed the policy debate. The study suggests progress can be made in applying an adapted version of the framework to the social sciences. However, some impacts may be inaccessible to evaluation, and some evaluations may occur too early or too late to capture the impact of research on a constantly changing policy environment. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Evaluating health research funding in Ireland: assessing the impacts of the Health Research Board of Ireland's funding activities

Understanding the impact of research is important for funding bodies in accounting for funds, advocating additional resources and learning how better to achieve their aims. The Health Research Board (HRB) has funded research in Ireland for over 20 years. We analysed eight examples of HRB grants from between 10 and 15 years earlier using the Payback Framework to catalogue the impacts. They ranged from world-class academic articles and new clinical assays through to improvements in recovery time for acute myocardial infarction and development of a drug company worth over €5 million. Here we first describe the study, then examine the role of the Payback Framework in research impact assessment including examining impacts made by the HRB study itself following its completion in 2008. We discuss how that study has contributed to further development of research impact assessment methods that could be used by the HRB and others. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.