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Abstract
‘Impact’ has become a standard way of conceptualising the contributions that research makes to policy-making and practice, this reflecting in large part the shift from a state patronage to an investment model of research funding. However, little attention has been given to the metaphor that underpins the term ‘impact’. Yet this is important because there are ways in which it can distort our understanding of the public contribution of academic research, and thereby create false expectations about it. Some problematic assumptions built into the metaphor are examined, along with several ways in which it may obscure our understanding of the relationship between research and policy-making or practice.
Notes on contributor
Martyn Hammersley is Professor of Educational and Social Research at The Open University, UK. He has carried out research in the sociology of education and the sociology of the media. However, much of his work has been concerned with the methodological issues surrounding social enquiry. He has written several books, including: (with Paul Atkinson) Ethnography: Principles in practice (Third edition Routledge 2007); Educational research, policymaking and practice (Paul Chapman, 2002), and The myth of research-based policy and practice (Sage, 2013).
Notes
1. This is sometimes presented as demanding ‘engagement’: that researchers must engage with policymakers or practitioners in order to try to ensure that their research has impact: see Gewirtz & Cribb, Citation2006; also Hammersley, Citation2008. Advocacy of some kinds of action research or intervention research represents an even more radical version of the idea, in which the research process itself must be transformed by the participation of those whose practice is being studied; indeed, it may be required that they carry out the research themselves.
2. For a history of these demands in a representative field, education, see Nisbet & Broadfoot, Citation1980. A similar story could be told in most other areas. For a discussion of models of the relationship between research and practice, see Nutley et al., Citation2007.
3. This is part of a broader shift in policy towards universities, see Collini, Citation2012 and Citation2013, and some have claimed that it represents a secular trend in the character of research in post-industrial societies (Gibbons et al., Citation1994; Gibbons Citation2000). My focus here is on the significance of impact for academic rather than for more practical forms of research (for this distinction, see Hammersley, Citation2002, ch. 6). In fact, the investment model tends to reduce academic to practical research, or at least to require that it be dressed in its clothes. A small industry has developed concerned either with demonstrating the impact of social science (see the Campaign for Social Science website: http://campaignforsocialscience.org.uk/; Bastow et al., Citation2014) or with advising researchers or policymakers about how they can increase the ‘impact’ of research (for examples, see the LSE Impact of Social Science Handbook, available at (accessed 19.11.13): http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/the-handbook/, Brown, Citation2013). What is taken for granted in almost all of this literature is that academic research can be strategically managed so as to produce ‘impact’, and that it is desirable to attempt this.
4. Little attention has been given to this. For example, despite claiming to focus on ‘conceptual issues’, Davies et al., Citation2005a do not examine the concept of impact itself.
5. It is usually formulated in terms of the older game of billiards, but the same types of ball and table are used in both games. Of course, the fact that the reference is to a game indicates that the analogy is not an entirely physical one. For examination of a different metaphor – translation – that is frequently applied to the relationship between research and policymaking/practice, see Hammersley, Citationin press. Another approach, one that presents an alternative to linear models of ‘impact’ or ‘knowledge transfer’, appeals to the concept of ‘knowledge mobilisation’, see Bannister & Hardill, Citation2013. Moss (Citation2013) identifies some of problems associated with the application of this model.
6. It has also often been noted that the speeds of these activities are very different; so that, even when researchers and policymakers are aligned in their focus, it is often not possible for researchers to supply the information that policymakers need when they require it: the production process takes longer than the period between policymakers recognising what they need and wanting to use it.
7. While this argument has often been formulated in terms of the concept of ideology (see, for example, Weiss, Citation1983), there are dangers with use of that term: it carries a great deal of baggage, much of it pejorative. It tends to suggest that these assumptions are simply a matter of irrational commitment, whereas they are based on experience and are (in principle) open to reasonable deliberation even though there may be no single correct answer to the questions they address. For this argument as it applies to justice, see Sen, Citation2009, pp. xvii-xviii. Furthermore, in my view the fact that policymakers and practitioners rely upon a largely fixed framework of assumptions is unavoidable. This is not, of course, to say that the particular assumptions adopted by particular policymakers or practitioners at particular times are justified, indeed they may often be seriously misconceived.
8. This will, of course, vary somewhat between researchers. But while some have public reputations and social connections that give them considerable influence with policymakers, most do not.
9. For an outline of some of the issues here, albeit encased in what is in my view an overly-optimistic assessment of the prospects of measuring and predicting ‘impact’, see Davies et al., Citation2005a.
10. Of course, policy-makers have sometimes sought to use research as a means of control over professional practitioners, furthering a process of de-professionalisation (Hammersley, Citation2013, pp. 18–20). This indicates that the consequences for practitioners may also be significant.
11. There are conflicting views about the consequences of the impact agenda on social science. For example, Brewer (Citation2011) regards it as a ‘sheep in wolf's clothing’, that can be turned to advantage. Similarly, some social scientists committed to participatory inquiry are primarily interested in how it could be used to serve their purposes, see for instance Pain Citation2014. Other commentators are closer in their assessment to the view I have adopted in this article, for example Holmwood, Citation2011.
12. ‘Impact’ is sometimes defined in ways that state or imply benefit (as, for example, in the definitions used by the Economic and Social Research Council, the main funding body in the UK, and in the Research Excellence Framework, the procedure for assessing the ‘research performance’ of UK universities), but there is rarely much attention to how what is and is not beneficial is to be determined, and by whom. Yet this is likely to be controversial, since many policies and practices are divisive, and research may be used either to justify or to criticise them.
13. This is, of course, a matter of degree: see Polanyi, Citation1958.
14. Needless to say, there is a similar divergence from the ideal as regards much policymaking and practice today. This is a further reason why the impact of research in those fields is not a good measure of its value.