Linking research to its uses: Making sense of how decisions are informed by research

Linking societal impacts to research outputs is important for researchers, research funders and research organizations, in order to capture and attribute those less obvious, intangible uses of research. Understanding the process of research use and how it emerges as impact are poorly understood when the use of research is not directly linked to a specific researcher or research project. In order to identify and capture the use of research in policy and practice, where there are no direct links to the researcher, it is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the process from the perspective of the users. The proposed research will explore the questions: In what ways are policy and pratice decisions informed by research? How can research be linked to its use? The partner organization, CASRAI will use the results of this research to improve its evolving catalogue of data elements for measuring the societal impact of research. The study proposed for this internship will provide evidence for the continued development of CASRAI’s research impact data standards.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Creso Sa

Student:

Amy Lemay

Partner:

Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information

Discipline:

Other

Sector:

University:

University of Toronto

Program: