However, securing funds to embed evidence-based solutions is often a challenge. The potential pathway to outcomes and impacts is disrupted by the inevitable need to propose yet more novel research rather than progressing toward impact, in order to secure much needed funding via competitive processes. Novelty is often bundled with concepts of risk, pushing researchers into realms where current knowledge and accepted principles are applied in `unproved or speculative’ ways, new methods or ideas are proposed, and incremental or ground-breaking advances are made. 

The issue is, does rewarding considerable novelty and risk necessarily ensure the research will deliver usable and useful findings? How much of this type of research can New Zealand afford, compared with nations that deploy substantial funding pools to support basic, untargeted research?

Applied research that has a clear outcome in sight for a broad range of users within a realistic timeframe can deliver real change and benefits for Aotearoa New Zealand’s environment, society and economy. But it may not have a novel and highly risky launching pad. Instead, it might require more resources to support implementation, adoption and adaptation to make a difference. A challenge Melissa notes when she asks, `Who funds implementation?’

That's right - even beer (or in this case a calendar for the brewing of beer) can be a great candidate to highlight some of the basic principles of data visualisation.

In our Communicating Your Impact workshop we link to a few of our favourite experts, one of whom is Stephanie Evergreen. In this blog she illustrates how concepts like layout, colour choice, and the use of graphics/images can transform something really ugly and hard to read into something that is informative at a glance.

Why do we care?
One of the many ways that we create pathways to impact is through communication.

Hard to read and understand graphs and graphics are like loud noise at a cafe. Distracting and sometimes just make us leave.

Click on the link above to learn more. Stephanie is also really busy on LinkedIn and regularly shares little pearls of wisdom, so if you're active on LinkedIn follow her there too.

The Healthier Lives NSC has been tasked with researching how to significantly reducing the death and disease burden and achieve equitable health outcomes from four of our biggest 'killer' non-communicable diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity).

Like many of us, the team at Healthier Lives were feeling frustrated at how seeming little evidence is making its way into policy and practice - the pathways to having an actual impact from research.

As a result, they organised a hui consisting of a series of webinars (which you can watch here) and then an online workshop to "explore ways to strengthen" these pathways that could be embedded into our new health system.

In the workshop, attendees were asked to consider the following questions:

• which key elements are required in the future health system to create effective pathways between research, policy, and practice?
• what culture changes are needed to drive new ways of operating?

What came out of the workshops?
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Workshop participants agreed that "Aotearoa New Zealand needs more transparent and system-embedded processes" if these pathways from evidence to impact are to be achieved.

The questions prompted the identification of SIX KEY ELEMENTS and FIVE GUIDING PRINCIPLES that are needed if research evidence is going to be effectively embedded and actioned via policy and practice change.

The summary of findings from this workshop have been documented here: https://healthierlives.co.nz/webinar-pathways-between-research-policy-and-practice/, and summarised in the diagram below taken from page 3 of this report.

Only through the implementation of these elements and principles will we be able to "build the necessary processes and foster the collaboration required to ensure the best research is utilised to its fullest potential for the health of Aotearoa New Zealand".

So what jumped out at us?

Reading through the summary of findings had us nodding our heads A LOT. iPEN has been doing its own work on trying to understand what the systemic barriers and enablers to delivering impact from research, and it was reassuring to read many of the same themes emerging. 

The diagram above notes the critical importance of the 'who and how' (in the guiding principles, and multi-directional access to expertise) which also links nicely to our blog and link to Reed and Rudman's recent article about Rethinking research impact: voice, context, and power at the interface of science, policy, and practice.

They note (when summarising why there is a need for strengthening pathways) that many of the historical mechanisms for bringing wider voices in - who often create or facilitate these pathways - have been largely disbanded. Further, they note that although ad hoc groups might be useful for responding to discrete events (like COVID), they are probably insufficient to address the more 'wicked' diseases this NCS is focusing on as their causes are multiple and systemic.

(Sidenote - those of us who are systems thinkers may be having a 'duh' moment right now. Boundaries, perspectives, and relationships are our starting points.....)

Measuring what matters (what's valued) - even if its hard. Equity is a core focus for our health system, and that ensuring this is actually being realised means having to figure out ways to evidence this so change can actually be monitored and used to inform decision-making at all levels (local, regional, and national).

Transparency means communicating information in ways that are understandable to others, and that this is fundamental in building trust and confidence in our findings.

In our iPEN training we acknowledge that when we spend so much of our time talking to our professional colleagues we can forget that not everyone speaks your science language. This can be a challenge as we have been trained to communicate in this way (i.e., with our academic peers through publications using the research equivalent of legalese).

Much like how learning another language is best done via the emersion method, figuring out how to communicate well with your stakeholders means getting to know them, and then using language they understand. 

How does all this link to our training and the advice we give?

​Figure out who your stakeholders and partners are/are likely to be, and involve them in your projects from the START. Try to recognise, understand, and manage power dynamics as part of this process, and know that relationships take time to build and maintain (and that this happens before, during, and after the projects themselves). Understand their context and use language and words they understand.

If you can hit all these marks, you'll be well on the way to strengthening your own pathways to impact.

Have you ever thought about how your work may be perceived and what you can do to ensure positive outcomes are realised? 

 Mark Reed (Fast Track Impact and SRUC) and Hannah Rudman (SRUC) recently raised this very topic in a recent article in Sustainability Science. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-022-01216-w
 
Many of you will now be quite familiar with the concept of impact – benefits (desired changes) resulting from our work, or their potential realisation. By and large we refer to these benefits as occurring beyond academia. 

 But these benefits also have an ‘evil twin’. Some colloquially refer to this as ‘grimpact’ - negative consequences resulting from our work, or their potential realisation. 

 But, who gets to determine what an impact (benefit) is, and why? 
 
Different groups may perceive the same outcomes as either positive or negative, while even “…the same group may perceive an outcome very differently in a different time or changed context”. 
 Reed and Rudman point out:

So then, is our work enabling or perpetuating injustices and inequities? 

It is widely accepted that ongoing appropriate engagement with such groups from conceptualisation of research through to pursuit of outcomes mitigates against the risk of negative consequences being realised or perceived. 

For us in New Zealand we've had somewhat of a head start on these sorts of considerations, as we try to better honour Te Tiriti. Many of us now understand and have experienced that what 'good' looks like very much depends on who you are, where you stand, and the power (or lack thereof) that comes with the 'who'.

But then how should you design your research? By thinking about your DESIGN, and your POSITIONALITY

DESIGN: The authors identify three important considerations for successful research impact design:

• Context
• Voice
• Power

This is all about thinking systematically about who's voices should be in the room and represented, for your particular project or programme, and including them from the get-go.

​While the authors recognise this comes with challenges (particularly in making the time necessary for relationships to be forged so they can and will be 'present') they note:
​

POSITIONALITY: ​An important related matter they also point out is that, despite your best efforts, as a researcher you have considerable influence on the shape and perception of your research.

They then go on to lay bare their identities to provide the reader context, in what some (not me) may find uncomfortable reading. 

Uncomfortable or not, this is useful because it welcomes us to understand the research in relation to its authors in their time, additionally outlining its limitations. It also disperses some of the accountability for the validity or success of the research away from the authors by laying bear some of the (less obvious) factors that may have influenced it.

Failure to understand, respond to, and account for the scope, limitations, and shape of your work unhelpfully biases it, and may lead to unintended consequences such as inaccurate assumptions, poor decision making, or perpetuated injustices. 
​

​We noticed many of our colleagues talking about the critical importance of acknowledging and reflecting “place” in evaluation practice. There was also a much more pronounced focus on what good evaluative practice looks like when working with indigenous communities.  And finally, there was an almost unashamed focus on values. While ‘values’ are literally at the heart of the e[VALUE]ation profession, the strength of presentations and workshops around this concept also jumped out at us (including a whole day workshop!)

​So what does this all mean for us?

​These repeating messages about place and values (especially exemplified when considering what good practice looks like when working with indigenous communities) highlighted and reminded us about the importance of acknowledging that the context in which our work happens is huge. It is the main factor that determines what is most important (valued) and for who, and therefore what outcomes and impacts are of greatest interest to “target” when planning any monitoring and evaluation activity.

“What matters and for whom” is a question that is routinely posed and at the core of evaluative practice. This question is all about seeking to understand the context, and consequently the values, of the people, actors, entities, and organisations who have an interest, or role to play, in a given project or programme.

This is equally valid to ask for our science projects and programmes. Impact is a human construct –  by definition it is talking about change. How we judge that – good, bad or otherwise – is completely dependent on the values within that context.

For us, our starting point is MBIE. Their Position Paper on the Impact of Research tells us to look at things like the Living Standards Framework as a starting point. However, this lacks any nuance around how much attention should be given to those big ‘categories’.

Just as we would expect (and require) our schools and hospitals to adapt the education and health care they provide to meet the needs of the local area, this is also needed for our science. While we do “get it” in theory (i.e. not all science can, or should, be commercialised), we don’t often challenge ourselves to do this more systematically. We don’t often ask our ourselves, “what’s going on for our stakeholders, partners, and collaborators? What do they care about? What’s the problem they need solving, and what contribution can we make to addressing this?”

Asking these questions gets to the heart of the matter and that is where the love lies. It’s all about what is cared about (valued) in that particular context, and consequently, the kind of difference (impact) you could make.

The good news!

​Taking time to really engage with the context and values your science is located in doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming. We know from our training that you often have many of the “answers”, its just having the right tools and guidance to be more systematic about it.

We have links to lots of simple but effective tools in our Clarifying, Planning, and Developing modules and you can find lots of others over on the Beyond Results website (thanks AgResearch!) as well as the Integrated Research Toolkit, hosted by Manaaki Whenua.

And, if you really want to give these a go, come along to one of our workshops. To find out when they’re running just drop us a line via the contacts page.

In our iPEN workshops, and especially our Communicating your impact module, we talk about how to engage your stakeholders (or engage new ones) and how we need to be clear about what the call to action is.

Given the competing priorities people are likely to be balancing, they need to see enough value in what you're asking them to do to be prepared to do 'something' for you. An effective call to action is important if we care about impact, as without our partners, collaborators, and stakeholders, we have much less chance of the ripples from our research turning into waves.

In our workshops we talk about how we can learn from the 'storytelling' techniques which are widely used by successful public speakers. Guidance given to TED Talks presenters for example, draws heavily on these principles.

 If you're looking for a quick read on what this all means, and what you might need to be thinking about next time you're asked to talk to a group of people that are important to your research take a look at this short read from Duarte on how to develop the best big idea for your presentation.

The article gives some great tips on things like:

• how to think about what the takeaway message might be
• how to build a distinct 'point of view' to catch your audience's attention
• how to figure out what's at stake for your listener, so you can engage them effectively

And if this piques your interest, you might like to follow this up with another short post from Duarte on how to influence through story.

For more ideas and tips, check out our Communicating Your Impact resources page, or get in touch to come along to our next workshop.

Designing and executing great research means getting your research questions right. They provide us with a scaffolding that keeps us targeted on what we need to focus on and deliver.

​In a nutshell, MS Srinivasan (Principal Scientist, NIWA) found that although he was producing what he thought was helpful information for farmers so they could irrigate more efficiently, his outputs weren’t leading to farmers doing anything differently. 

​Through their use of a co-innovation approach, their multi-disciplinary team developed a set of 12 questions (building on work by Donald Schön). These helped to ‘unlock’ their understanding of the context their research was happening in. 

Engaging farmers and other stakeholders through the use of these 12 questions helped MS and the team design a fit-for-purpose project. Then once the project was up and running, these questions were used again, to enable healthy reflection (with their stakeholders) on the progress of the project. 

Find out how the questions were developed and used and find links to publications: 12 Questions Scientists Should Ask Stakeholders to Increase Research Impact. 

The OLW team regularly share examples of how they are designing and delivering impact through their research. If you want to learn more subscribe to their newsletter!

Nature recently published an interesting article on how funding mechanisms and the incentives/constraints for scientists in South Korea have stifled outcomes and innovation. This is a great reminder that the systems we work in shape our mahi (from the type of research we do to the outputs we create). Being mindful of the context we work in can help us navigate some of the challenges and push for change in a way that will work to create impact.

The Nature article highlights three of the seven themes which iPEN included in our submission to the Te Ara Paerangi Green Paper to enable impactful science.

• Provide funding stability with flexibility
• Reward and recognise impactful work
• Work to align motivations and beliefs of individuals and entities   

 
Despite South Korea’s significant increase in research funding over the past decades, with the Basic Sciences Promotion Act, the article suggests that the inflexible, time-bound approach to research assessment is stifling basic science.
The country is home to world-class scientists but, according to the writer, it is not as productive as it could be, despite sufficient financial resources. This could be attributed to policies being “favouring short-term results over bold exploration”.
Read the article here.
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