Defining impact
As an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) investment, ADR UK adopts the definition of impact used by ESRC and across UK Research and Innovation as a whole:
“Impact is the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy.”
This includes informing changes to government policy and public service provision that lead to better social and economic outcomes for people and communities. This impact can be at any geographic level: from the local, to the national and international.
Our teams and partners have a range of strategies to maximise impact across our ‘Five Ps’: process, policy, practice, people and potential.
Common approaches to ensuring we deliver real impact are embedded across our work. These include:
- partnering with government to identify and open up public data for research securely and sustainably
- aligning with national strategies and departmental Areas of Research Interest in each UK nation
- engaging with the right stakeholders, communities and individuals at the right time to inform ouputs
- delivering research findings in formats that are digestible and usable by different interested parties
- disseminating research findings widely to maximise use, evaluating the results regularly
- taking a leading role in data infrastructure innovation to play our part in its ongoing development
- ensuring all our work fulfils the public good test, embedded into the Digital Economy Act.
We maximise impact and public value from administrative data access, linking, and research across the ‘Five Ps’.
We seek to maximise value from administrative data access, linking, and research across the ‘Five Ps’.
Process
Championing a lasting culture change of closer working between academics and government to routinely share, link and use administrative data for research. Continuously working to smooth the researcher journey when utilising administrative data.
Potential
Creating both sustainable linked administrative datasets, and sustainable understanding of the data and what it can tell us. Ensuring datasets we open up can be accessed by researchers into the future, enabling them to generate further insights and evidence to impact policy, practice and people.
Policy
Providing government or other public bodies with new and evidenced information gained from research using our data to improve policies, strategies and standards.
