I was recently invited to give a presentation at the College of Social Sciences at San Jose State University on potential ways to promote and support scholarly and creative activity in the social sciences. I thank the College for the opportunity to comment on this important issue; increasing research impact affects researchers especially because of the turmoil around the role and relevance of higher education.
During my presentation, I talked about the three elements that I believe are essential to promote, expand, and highlight faculty research, especially in institutions with limited resources (see figure below).
ACTUALIZE: The one asset that we all have in abundance is the ability to generate ideas (or ideation). However, a substantial challenge is bringing those ideas from kernels of concepts through to tangible results. Actualizing kernels of ideas to projects and results is especially difficult where we experience too many professional and personal obligations and responsibilities. Actualizing can be supported by: (1) developing individual capacity to move ideas to action through training/coaching about for example more successfully applying for grants and contracts, and (2) creating enabling environments that support individual action for example with mentors/coaches, supportive colleagues (who provide feedback and ways to address gaps), and facilitating environments.
For further information especially on teams, please see Stokols, D., Hall, K. L., Taylor, B. K., & Moser, R. P. (2008). The science of team science: overview of the field and introduction to the supplement. American journal of preventive medicine, 35(2), S77-S89, which discusses “designing, implementing, and evaluating cross-disciplinary research initiatives.”
AMPLIFY: While individual capacity and supportive environments are necessary for supporting more research and expanding research impact, they are not sufficient. What is also necessary I believe is (1) to scale the work and (2) to raise visibility of the work. Scaling the work to larger and higher levels is needed to ensure that the research demonstrates its importance and viability across communities, regions, political jurisdictions, among other factors. Three ideas support scaling: working with rather than on or for partners and groups, developing funding strategies to support scaling (rather than one-off projects), and consistently and regularly assessing the effectiveness of the work. Raising the visibility of the work requires that we communicate appropriately through channels relevant to the target stakeholders.
For thoughts on partnering with communites, scaling, and visibility, please listen to Bluthenthal, Ricky. (2023). Addressing the Health and Needs of People Who Inject Drugs with Ricky Bluthenthal, PhD. USC Keck School of Medicine Preventive Pros podcast where he talks about pivoting and listening in his 30 years of research.
ACCELERATE: With the multiple obligations and responsibilities we all face every day, how do we move our ideas to projects and results more quickly without jeopardizing the quality, relevance, and partnerships needed? There are three tactics that I have benefited from in my own work to move ideation to project design and results more quickly: (1) supporting individual capacity by expanding time available and resources for preliminary data collection, proposal writing, and grants administration, (2) prioritizing projects for short and longer-term timelines -- what can be done now and what will require more time? -- and clarifying the trade-offs; and (3) monitoring to assess capacity needs and impact of resources, and assessing "research impact" in ways that are appropriate for the community, the research team, the university, and decision makers.
For more thoughts on "research impact," please see Donovan, C. (2011). State of the art in assessing research impact: introduction to a special issue. Research Evaluation, 20(3), 175-179, which defines “impact” as “broader social, environmental, cultural, and economic public value.”
To summarize, the framework consists of three interrelated elements:
Actualizing -- individual capacity building (training and resources) and enabling environment
Amplifying -- scaling the work and raising visibility
Accelerating -- expanding capacity to bring ideas to results and prioritizing for sequencing
Thank you to Dean Anne Marie Todd and the College of Social Sciences for your hospitality during my visit!
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