Esmeralda Bon shares her thoughts on measuring impact. In this blog post, she explores what measuring impact means. In future posts, she will look at non-academic impact and specific considerations around impact for early career researchers.
As academics we seek to contribute to knowledge and the understanding of phenomena by doing research. This also tends to be a requirement of our funders.
However, in relation to the impact tracking qatar rcs data and metrics debate (#CiteTheData), we may ask how can, do and should we measure impact, especially early in our career?
How can we measure impact?
Assuming that making an impact is somewhat similar to having an effect, we should, theoretically, be able to measure impact like we measure effects. Effects research tends to require an experimental or quasi-experimental design, in which it can be proven that a cause X has affected a consequence Y.
However, unlike the conducting of some of our research, the reception of our research takes place outside of a lab. This is problematic because this suggests that we can never be sure of our ‘real world’ impact.