How is development described? Impact (of research)?

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Angela Okune's picture
March 13, 2020

AO: Here, the interlocutor takes the time to carefully distinguish between "impact" (which she views as the "results") versus "reach" (how many people read something). Various publics are increasingly interested in the "impact" of research with diverse interpretations of what it means. Funders ask researchers to articulate the "broader impact" of research work (one of the categories of being awarded NSF funding for example) and "impact factor" is often used to rate and rank academic journals.

BC-MW-F-S-02 50:57

“So because then you're not showing impact in terms of how you've impacted your end users. So for example, if I was doing a project on sexual health targeted towards adolescent girls, the impact there would be how many people...what the results are from the study. That's how I would show impact. But in this case, I'm just showing impact in terms of how many people have read my study, and that that's a different type of impact and I wouldn't necessarily call that impact. That's just reach, I guess.”