Aiming for impact in your research can be an inherent part of your research, and might be the reason that you begin a research project in the first place. Evidencing impact, on the other hand, can seem like an extra piece of work. In this blog we’re exploring some ways to gather evidence of impact that might benefit your future work, and which don’t require too much extra time – or cost!

Before you dive in to planning your approach to evidence, it’s worth checking out our post on Mastering Impact Evaluation.

Testimonial evidence and corroborating statements

Testimonial evidence can be a great way to evidence the connection between your research and the resulting impact, and to gather both qualitative and quantitative support. This could come in various forms depending on the purpose of the evidence, from email exchanges to more formal testimonial statements. You can find our testimonial evidence help sheet here. 

If elements of your project have been recorded for other purposes, such as using film crews at events or recording conversations for podcasts, you may also find that some supporting statements have already been collected. 

Let others do the work

Just as a film crew at an event might already have gathered some supporting statements to help evidence your impact, there could be other work that’s already been done which can help to evidence your impact. Look out for any publications from beneficiaries of your research, such as business reports, financial statements, sector publications or even news articles, which could relate to your impact. These might directly evidence your impact if they cite your work, or they might evidence the change itself and support a separate statement verifying the role of your work.

Make the most of your relationships

Having effective conversations with your beneficiaries can help to gather evidence. The conversation itself might provide the basis for evidence, or it might prompt them to provide you with internal documents or work on reports to show the impact that has been made. It might help to explain that this could contribute to an iterative process of further improvements based on the work that has already been done.

Tracking Citations

Altmetric and PlumX can provide a lot of useful data that can indicate where your research has made an impact. You can find Altmetric and PlumX data for your outputs in our Research Portal (look for the colourful Altmetric ‘doughnut’ or purple PlumX icon to the right of the webpage).

Altmetric lists mentions in media and social media, as well as policy documents and patents. This could show where your research is being seen and used outside of academia, how it links to changes in the real world, and can also provide useful links to data that could support the claims. It can also be a great way to help you to evidence your impact pathways, showing how you moved from the underpinning research to the final impact. 

The university’s media team also gathers information on media relating to research taking place at the university. They can provide data on media reach to help support the extent of influence your research has had.

Hansard

Hansard is the official report of all parliamentary debates. You can search for reports by keyword, which could help you to find instances of your research being discussed in relation to policy change. Transcripts can be downloaded from Hansard and used as evidence for influencing policy change.

Google Alerts

You can set up Google Alerts to make you aware of mentions of your research online, in both academic and non-academic contexts. This is a great way to find out about uses of your research that you wouldn’t otherwise be aware of, without having to regularly contribute time to searching online yourself. Google Alerts are simple to set up and you can find instructions here.

General tips

Remember to plan in your evidence as early as possible, as it can save a lot of time and effort in the long run and ensures that you have access to benchmarking data against which you can demonstrate your impact, as appropriate.

This post is far from exhaustive. Each new impact might present a different type of evidence. It should be independent (i.e. not produced by a member of the research team) and demonstrate the change that occurred, your role, the importance of your research, or some combination of these points. What that actually looks like can take many different forms!

We have extensive guidance on Collecting Evidence in our Impact and Knowledge Exchange Resources Drive. Get in touch with the impact team (impact@port.ac.uk) if you have any questions.