How do I capture impact?
Knowing what difference your research makes is important. Here are a some reasons why it’s useful to continuously monitor and evaluate your work:
- Enhancing your learning and improving your research and other work.
- Reporting to funders and stakeholders.
- As evidence and examples for future funding applications.
- Supporting personal development and career progression.
- Contributing to REF Engagement and Impact submissions.
Capturing Activity, Outcomes, and Impact: Understanding the Differences
When measuring the success of a project or research initiative, it is important to understand the differences between activity, outcomes, and impact and which of these you are trying to capture.
Activity
Activities are the specific actions or tasks undertaken during your project (e.g., conducting experiments, organising workshops, or developing a new product). Capturing activities involves documenting what was done, how, with whom, and the resources used. This step is crucial to understanding the process and ensuring that all tasks are completed effectively.
Outcomes
Outcomes are the immediate, measurable results of your activities (e.g., increased knowledge, improved skills, new tools or techniques). Capturing outcomes helps you assess progress towards your goals, and identifies potential challenges.
Impact
Impact represents the broader, long-term changes influenced by your research (e.g., policy changes, social improvements, financial gains). Capturing impact is generally challenging because it involves measuring deep, lasting effects that may take time to fully emerge, and might be difficult to link to specific research and activities.
Tips for capturing impact
Whether planning for future, or reflecting on past, impact, here are some useful things to consider:
- Start thinking about monitoring and evaluation early. The sooner you start, the more opportunity you have for learning and adapting.
- Clearly define what you want to achieve (or think you have achieved). What is the difference your research is making in the world?
- What are you trying to demonstrate? Examples include:
- A change has occurred.
- The change is positive, significant, and affects many people.
- Your research played a key role in making this change happen.
- How can you show these things? Think about the kind of evidence available to support these things.
- Why are you trying to capture the impact of your work and who will you share your evidence with? This will influence the type of evidence you collect and the way you present it. Funders often have specific reporting requirements, or you may have the freedom to showcase impact in more creative ways like a video or exhibition.
Explore a range of guidance and resources to help you plan your monitoring and evaluation and explore what methodologies and tools will work best for you.
If you need support or want to discuss plans for evaluating and capturing your impact reach out to your College Impact Team or the central team at RIandE@glasgow.ac.uk.
Research Excellence Framework
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a UK-wide assessment of the strength and quality of research environment, outputs and impacts conducted and overseen by the four higher education funding bodies for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is run as a comprehensive expert review every 6-7 years and underpins the allocation of an annual quality-related public funding grant to universities. The REF is important to UK universities because it informs reputation, rankings, and funding.
The next REF is REF2029 with a deadline scheduled for late 2028.
In REF2029 Engagement and Impact will make up 25% of the assessment score. For REF, Impact is defined as ‘an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia.’ Case studies of impact are assessed based on rigour, reach, and significance and must meet a range of specific criteria to be eligible for submission.
University staff can find out more about REF impact on the REF2029 SharePoint site accessible to all staff.
In 2023 we delivered a presentation to Demystify REF Impact. You can catch up on the slides and recording.
If you have any questions about REF2029 you can contact REF@glasgow.ac.uk.