February 26, 2020

Research Impact Assessment methodology using data collected via Researchfish

The research paper, Mechanisms and pathways to impact in public health research: a preliminary analysis of research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), published in the primary research journal BMC Medical Research Methodology (Boulding et al. (2020) 20:34 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-020-0905-7), by Researchfish Member NIHR, looks at research focused on public health and the impacts that arise from it, much of it using data collected via the Researchfish platform.

In the paper Boulding et al. looked at 1386 public health research projects and of these identified 857 projects that may have begun reporting impacts via Researchfish. Of these projects, following further data analysis, nine were selected to investigate further through interviews with principal investigators and workshops.

Pathways to impact uncovered included research that contributed to debates on what constitutes appropriate evidence for national policy change, acknowledging local ‘unintended’ impacts, building trusted relationships with stakeholders across health and non-health sectors and actors, collaborating with local authorities, and using non-academic dissemination channels.

The full paper, including more detail on the methods used, results obtained and conclusions gleaned can be found on Biomedcentral.