Project Scoping

p. 9-10


Texte intégral

1At the end of 2016, the presiding directors of IRD tasked the Mission for research evaluation and programming (MEPR) with a research project seeking to identify and describe the impact of the institute's work in the global South.

Objectives

2The objectives of this project were three-fold:

  • to meet the expectations of IRD's supervisory authorities and of authorities in the global South countries where the institute works regarding the impact of the research conducted;
  • improve knowledge of the actors, factors and processes likely to favor such impact;
  • provide the teams with tools for analyzing and describing the potential societal benefits of their work beyond the academic sphere.

3The objective of consequently developing a tool for the assessment of research or of researchers' activity was not included.

Organization

4The project relied on a project team in charge of operational coordination, a methodological group in charge of ensuring the overall coherence of the project and its anchoring in the institution's scientific and partnership context, and scientific rapporteurs for each of the cases studied (see appendices).

5The project team managed project coordination, formalized the methodological approach, and oversaw the realization of the pilot case studies.

6The methodological group consisted of eight IRD researchers covering a wide spectrum of disciplines. It participated at all stages of the process: method selection and adaptation, pilot cases selection, monitoring and validation of studies, interim reports and recommendations.

7Each case study was led by a scientific rapporteur responsible for the study and an advisor as point of contact for the project team, and had the support of one or two members of the methodological group.

8Cases were documented based on interviews conducted amongst research partners from the global South and North, the actors who contributed to the dissemination of the results, and the impact recipients. The term recipients here refers to the actors (organizations or individuals) directly or indirectly affected - whether positively or negatively - by the impacts generated by the research and its results.

Method selection

9After a review of the literature and a critical look at the different impact assessment methods, particularly for research impacts (ex-post vs. in itinere, i.e. whilst research is being conducted; quantitative vs. qualitative; evaluative vs. summative, etc.), the methodological group approved the choice of a method based on standardized ex-post case studies, inspired by those conducted by Cirad (Impress – Impact of Research in the South) and Inrae (Asirpa – public agronomic research impact assessment).

10Prior to setting up the project, discussions were held with Cirad and Inrae concerning their respective methods for assessing the socioeconomic impacts of research in the agronomic field. These discussions and the publications addressing the corresponding methodological work (Barret et al., 2017; Colinet et al., 2014; Joly et al., 2015) greatly informed the approach implemented by IRD.

11The approach taken is therefore qualitative, descriptive and replicable.

12This pilot project is a first step towards describing the societal impacts of IRD's research. Its results open up prospects for an assessment of the generic elements that favor the achievement of impact. These remain to be explored and enriched over the course of the case studies.


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