Maite Solans, ISOR Group
Society has high expectations from research and wishes to know what are its benefits: social, decision-making, health, economic, etc., and in order to respond to these expectations, it’s important to assess its impact. An important aspect to consider when we want to evaluate the impact of research would be to choose our starting point: a project or an impact?
Let’s consider the first option. Our starting point is a research project. Now we want to find out whether it has led to a specific health benefit. In most cases, this cannot be found out immediately, on the contrary, we’ll have to spend enough time waiting for the effects to take place. As time passes, we then find that this project will contribute in some way or another to a greater number of impacts and also that other research projects have their own impact. If our starting point is a specific impact, the opposite will occur: that is, it will be difficult to connect an impact with a specific project and as time passes, many other research projects will have contributed to our specific impact. Continue reading