Evidencing impact: research impact assessment support for UKWIR
Davide Restivo, Wikimedia Commons
What was the issue?
UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) delivers a broad programme of research for its members, which consist of water companies in the UK and Ireland, to address some of the main challenges that they face. As an organisation funded by its member companies, it is important for UKWIR to be able to show that the companies’ research investment brings returns.
UKWIR has processes in place to gather information from its members about how they have used and benefitted from the organisation's research. However, it wanted to refine its approach to ensure the most relevant and useful information was being gathered from companies without creating unnecessary burden.
How did we help?
UKWIR commissioned RAND Europe to provide an independent assessment to help refine the organisation's approach to measuring research impact. The research team carried out a programme of interviews with UKWIR’s members to better understand their views about the value of measuring the impact of its research and the evidence it can provide.
The final report used insights from the interviews to produce recommendations on how to enable a broader community understanding among UKWIR’s members around how to measure research impact in the water sector, and how to create a framework for measuring impact.