ESRC Society Today

The ESRC is exploring new methods for assessing the impact of the research it funds on policy makers and practitioners, in order to demonstrate its broader contribution to society and the economy. This forms part of the new strategic emphasis on impact assessment alongside the Council's work on bibliometrics and international benchmarking.  As part of this initiative, the Council began in 2006, to commission a series of impact case studies aimed at identifying the impact from ESRC research, and testing evaluation approaches.   A summary of the Council's impact evaluation work to date (February 2009) is available here:

• Taking Stock:  A Summary of ESRC's Work to Evaluate the Impact of Research on Policy and Practice (PDF)

Individual reports from the Policy and Practice Case Studies are available here:

• Impact Evaluation Case Studies

The ESRC is developing approaches to the economic valuation of social science research as part of its impact assessment framework. This is a challenging task because of the absence in most cases of recognisable markets for social science outputs, but the Council is seeking to use economic evaluation techniques where they can be applied appropriately and robustly.  Economic valuation captures one element of research impact and the Council recognises the importance of using such techniques within its framework for assessing the full range of research contributions to policy and practice.

In 2008 the ESRC commissioned Frontier Economics to undertake a trial of economic impact valuation methods.  The trial took the form of a study of impact at two of the ESRC's Research Centres: the Centre for Economic Performance and the Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance.  This methodological study focussed on selected research and knowledge transfer activities and did not comprise a formal ESRC evaluation of impact at either Centre.  The report from this study is available here:

• Measuring the Impact of ESRC Funding (PDF)  

The start of the ESRC's recent work in developing impact assessment methods was the International Symposium 'New approaches to assessing the non-academic impact of social science research' which took place in London in May 2005. In 2007 the ESRC organised a workshop to consider the methodological issues arising from the case studies and to begin developing approaches to assess the economic impact of social science research. The reports from both events are available here:

• Development of ESRC Impact Evaluation Methods