Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
Research on bystander intervention leads to a national public-awareness campaign and documented behaviour change.
- Is an instance
Long-running community partnerships shift local mental-health support structures.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Asserting societal impact without identifying beneficiaries or evidence of change.
- Not an instance
Counting public lectures as societal impact with no measurement of effect.
Editorial commentary
Societal impact captures the social, community and civic effects of research. It includes changes in public knowledge or attitudes, shifts in social practice, improvements in community wellbeing, equity gains, and contributions to civil society institutions. Assessment is challenging because societal change is multi-causal, slow, and culturally specific; methods include contribution analysis, social return on investment, and structured case studies. Societal impact frameworks (e.g. SIAMPI, ASIRPA) emphasise productive interactions between researchers and societal actors as a precondition for impact.
References
- Spaapen J, van Drooge L 'Introducing productive interactions in social impact assessment' Research Evaluation 2011. SIAMPI project documentation.
Also known as
Social impact (research) · Community impact
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Societal impact"
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