definition of evaluation by different authors

This report, prepared by one of the evaluation team members (Richard Flaman), presents a non-exhaustive review definitions of primarily decentralization, and to a lesser extent decentralization as linked to local governance. It is important to emphasize that Not everyone within the higher education sector itself is convinced that evaluation of higher education activity is a worthwhile task (Kelly and McNicoll 2011). Definition of Performance Appraisal : Definition by Eminent Authors 0000007559 00000 n Research findings including outputs (e.g., presentations and publications), Communications and interactions with stakeholders and the wider public (emails, visits, workshops, media publicity, etc), Feedback from stakeholders and communication summaries (e.g., testimonials and altmetrics), Research developments (based on stakeholder input and discussions), Outcomes (e.g., commercial and cultural, citations), Impacts (changes, e.g., behavioural and economic). In the Brunel model, depth refers to the degree to which the research has influenced or caused change, whereas spread refers to the extent to which the change has occurred and influenced end users. From 2014, research within UK universities and institutions will be assessed through the REF; this will replace the Research Assessment Exercise, which has been used to assess UK research since the 1980s. This presents particular difficulties in research disciplines conducting basic research, such as pure mathematics, where the impact of research is unlikely to be foreseen. Despite many attempts to replace it, no alternative definition has . The Oxford English Dictionary defines impact as a Marked effect or influence, this is clearly a very broad definition. In this case, a specific definition may be required, for example, in the Research Excellence Framework (REF), Assessment framework and guidance on submissions (REF2014 2011b), which defines impact as, an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia. It is concerned with both the evaluation of achievement and its enhancement. The process of evaluation involves figuring out how well the goals have been accomplished. 10312. The difficulty then is how to determine what the contribution has been in the absence of adequate evidence and how we ensure that research that results in impacts that cannot be evidenced is valued and supported. Wooding et al. 2007). Every piece of research results in a unique tapestry of impact and despite the MICE taxonomy having more than 100 indicators, it was found that these did not suffice. The traditional form of evaluation of university research in the UK was based on measuring academic impact and quality through a process of peer review (Grant 2006). 0000004731 00000 n However, it must be remembered that in the case of the UK REF, impact is only considered that is based on research that has taken place within the institution submitting the case study. Capturing data, interactions, and indicators as they emerge increases the chance of capturing all relevant information and tools to enable researchers to capture much of this would be valuable. Test, measurement, and evaluation: Understanding and use of the In the majority of cases, a number of types of evidence will be required to provide an overview of impact. The verb evaluate means to form an idea of something or to give a judgment about something. A variety of types of indicators can be captured within systems; however, it is important that these are universally understood. As such research outputs, for example, knowledge generated and publications, can be translated into outcomes, for example, new products and services, and impacts or added value (Duryea et al. Downloadable! PDF Evaluation ModelsAbstract - Western Michigan University x[s)TyjwI BBU*5,}~O#{4>[n?_?]ouO{~oW_~fvZ}sCy"n?wmiY{]9LXn!v^CkWIRp&TJL9o6CjjvWqAQ6:hU.Q-%R_O:k_v3^=79k{8s7?=`|S^BM-_fa@Q`nD_(]/]Y>@+no/>$}oMI2IdMqH,'f'mxlfBM?.WIn4_Jc:K31vl\wLs];k(vo_Teq9w2^&Ca*t;[.ybfYYvcn (2011) Maximising the Impacts of Your Research: A Handbook for Social Scientists (Pubd online) <, Lets Make Science Metrics More Scientific, Measuring Impact Under CERIF (MICE) Project Blog, Information systems of research funding agencies in the era of the Big Data. The Payback Framework systematically links research with the associated benefits (Scoble et al. While looking forward, we will be able to reduce this problem in the future, identifying, capturing, and storing the evidence in such a way that it can be used in the decades to come is a difficulty that we will need to tackle. These traditional bibliometric techniques can be regarded as giving only a partial picture of full impact (Bornmann and Marx 2013) with no link to causality. The University and College Union (University and College Union 2011) organized a petition calling on the UK funding councils to withdraw the inclusion of impact assessment from the REF proposals once plans for the new assessment of university research were released. There are areas of basic research where the impacts are so far removed from the research or are impractical to demonstrate; in these cases, it might be prudent to accept the limitations of impact assessment, and provide the potential for exclusion in appropriate circumstances. 4. Evaluate means to assess the value of something. In terms of research impact, organizations and stakeholders may be interested in specific aspects of impact, dependent on their focus. One notable definition is provided by Scriven (1991) and later adopted by the American Evaluation Association (): "Evaluation is the systematic process to determine merit, worth, value, or . Studies (Buxton, Hanney and Jones 2004) into the economic gains from biomedical and health sciences determined that different methodologies provide different ways of considering economic benefits. Assessment Defined - Assessment for Learning - Google The criteria for assessment were also supported by a model developed by Brunel for measurement of impact that used similar measures defined as depth and spread. Collecting this type of evidence is time-consuming, and again, it can be difficult to gather the required evidence retrospectively when, for example, the appropriate user group might have dispersed. %PDF-1.3 2007) who concluded that the researchers and case studies could provide enough qualitative and quantitative evidence for reviewers to assess the impact arising from their research (Duryea et al. In many instances, controls are not feasible as we cannot look at what impact would have occurred if a piece of research had not taken place; however, indications of the picture before and after impact are valuable and worth collecting for impact that can be predicted. (2007) surveyed researchers in the US top research institutions during 2005; the survey of more than 6000 researchers found that, on average, more than 40% of their time was spent doing administrative tasks. Evaluation Research - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics What indicators, evidence, and impacts need to be captured within developing systems? Evaluation is the systematic collection and inter- pretation of evidence leading as a part of process to a judgement of value with a view to action., Evaluation is the application of a standard and a decision-making system to assessment data to produce judgments about the amount and adequacy of the learning that has taken place., 1. An evaluation essay is a composition that offers value judgments about a particular subject according to a set of criteria. What is Evaluation in Education? Definition of Evaluation in Education Again the objective and perspective of the individuals and organizations assessing impact will be key to understanding how temporal and dissipated impact will be valued in comparison with longer-term impact. What are the methodologies and frameworks that have been employed globally to evaluate research impact and how do these compare? What Is Assessment? - Westminster College This raises the questions of whether UK business and industry should not invest in the research that will deliver them impacts and who will fund basic research if not the government? 0000001178 00000 n Recommendations from the REF pilot were that the panel should be able to extend the time frame where appropriate; this, however, poses difficult decisions when submitting a case study to the REF as to what the view of the panel will be and whether if deemed inappropriate this will render the case study unclassified. The Economic and Social Benefits of HRB-funded Research, Measuring the Economic and Social Impact of the Arts: A Review, Research Excellence Framework Impact Pilot Exercise: Findings of the Expert Panels, Assessment Framework and Guidance on Submissions, Research Impact Evaluation, a Wider Context. In putting together evidence for the REF, impact can be attributed to a specific piece of research if it made a distinctive contribution (REF2014 2011a). Reviewing the research literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your question. This is being done for collation of academic impact and outputs, for example, Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools, which uses PubMed and text mining to cluster research projects, and STAR Metrics in the US, which uses administrative records and research outputs and is also being implemented by the ERC using data in the public domain (Mugabushaka and Papazoglou 2012). Assessment for learning is ongoing, and requires deep involvement on the part of the learner in clarifying outcomes, monitoring on-going learning, collecting evidence and presenting evidence of learning to others.. It is acknowledged in the article by Mugabushaka and Papazoglou (2012) that it will take years to fully incorporate the impacts of ERC funding. Impact is derived not only from targeted research but from serendipitous findings, good fortune, and complex networks interacting and translating knowledge and research. Attempting to evaluate impact to justify expenditure, showcase our work, and inform future funding decisions will only prove to be a valuable use of time and resources if we can take measures to ensure that assessment attempts will not ultimately have a negative influence on the impact of our research. As a result, numerous and widely varying models and frameworks for assessing impact exist. PDF Defining Assessment and Evaluation - SAQA It is time-intensive to both assimilate and review case studies and we therefore need to ensure that the resources required for this type of evaluation are justified by the knowledge gained. The transfer of information electronically can be traced and reviewed to provide data on where and to whom research findings are going. While defining the terminology used to understand impact and indicators will enable comparable data to be stored and shared between organizations, we would recommend that any categorization of impacts be flexible such that impacts arising from non-standard routes can be placed. What are the reasons behind trying to understand and evaluate research impact? Understand. PDF Decentralization: a Sampling of Definitions - Undp A comparative analysis of these definitions reveal that in defining performance appraisal they were saying the same thing, but in a slightly modified way. Definition of testing, assessment, and evaluation - My English Pages In the UK, evaluation of academic and broader socio-economic impact takes place separately. The Social Return on Investment (SROI) guide (The SROI Network 2012) suggests that The language varies impact, returns, benefits, value but the questions around what sort of difference and how much of a difference we are making are the same. Prague, Czech Republic, Health ResearchMaking an Impact. 0000002318 00000 n Indicators were identified from documents produced for the REF, by Research Councils UK, in unpublished draft case studies undertaken at Kings College London or outlined in relevant publications (MICE Project n.d.). However, the Achilles heel of any such attempt, as critics suggest, is the creation of a system that rewards what it can measure and codify, with the knock-on effect of directing research projects to deliver within the measures and categories that reward. Frameworks for assessing impact have been designed and are employed at an organizational level addressing the specific requirements of the organization and stakeholders. Cooke and Nadim (2011) also noted that using a linear-style taxonomy did not reflect the complex networks of impacts that are generally found. To achieve compatible systems, a shared language is required. From the outset, we note that the understanding of the term impact differs between users and audiences. 5. The Payback Framework has been adopted internationally, largely within the health sector, by organizations such as the Canadian Institute of Health Research, the Dutch Public Health Authority, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, and the Welfare Bureau in Hong Kong (Bernstein et al. Evaluative research is a type of research used to evaluate a product or concept, and collect data to help improve your solution. Scriven (2007:2) synthesised the definition of evaluation which appears in most dictionaries and the professional literature, and defined evaluation as "the process of determining merit, worth, or significance; an evaluation is a product of that process." . Clearly there is the possibility that the potential new drug will fail at any one of these phases but each phase can be classed as an interim impact of the original discovery work on route to the delivery of health benefits, but the time at which an impact assessment takes place will influence the degree of impact that has taken place. The case study does present evidence from a particular perspective and may need to be adapted for use with different stakeholders. A Review of International Practice, HM Treasury, Department for Education and Skills, Department of Trade and Industry, Yes, Research can Inform Health Policy; But can we Bridge the Do-Knowing its been Done Gap?, Council for Industry and Higher Education, UK Innovation Research Centre. It is worth considering the degree to which indicators are defined and provide broader definitions with greater flexibility. Evidence of academic impact may be derived through various bibliometric methods, one example of which is the H index, which has incorporated factors such as the number of publications and citations. A Preferred Framework and Indicators to Measure Returns on Investment in Health Research, Measuring Impact Under CERIF at Goldsmiths, Anti-Impact Campaigns Poster Boy Sticks up for the Ivory Tower. 2010). Any person who has made a significant . Dennis Atsu Dake. For example, the development of a spin out can take place in a very short period, whereas it took around 30 years from the discovery of DNA before technology was developed to enable DNA fingerprinting. It is possible to incorporate both metrics and narratives within systems, for example, within the Research Outcomes System and Researchfish, currently used by several of the UK research councils to allow impacts to be recorded; although recording narratives has the advantage of allowing some context to be documented, it may make the evidence less flexible for use by different stakeholder groups (which include government, funding bodies, research assessment agencies, research providers, and user communities) for whom the purpose of analysis may vary (Davies et al. Research findings will be taken up in other branches of research and developed further before socio-economic impact occurs, by which point, attribution becomes a huge challenge. It is now possible to use data-mining tools to extract specific data from narratives or unstructured data (Mugabushaka and Papazoglou 2012). By asking academics to consider the impact of the research they undertake and by reviewing and funding them accordingly, the result may be to compromise research by steering it away from the imaginative and creative quest for knowledge. What is the Difference between Formative and Summative Evaluation through Example? It can be seen from the panel guidance produced by HEFCE to illustrate impacts and evidence that it is expected that impact and evidence will vary according to discipline (REF2014 2012). (2007), Nason et al. 2009). Consortia for Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information, for example, has put together a data dictionary with the aim of setting the standards for terminology used to describe impact and indicators that can be incorporated into systems internationally and seems to be building a certain momentum in this area. To adequately capture interactions taking place between researchers, institutions, and stakeholders, the introduction of tools to enable this would be very valuable. Introduction, what is meant by impact? Donovan (2011) asserts that there should be no disincentive for conducting basic research. Here we outline a few of the most notable models that demonstrate the contrast in approaches available. This is recognized as being particularly problematic within the social sciences where informing policy is a likely impact of research. 0000008591 00000 n This article aims to explore what is understood by the term research impact and to provide a comprehensive assimilation of available literature and information, drawing on global experiences to understand the potential for methods and frameworks of impact assessment being implemented for UK impact assessment. 2009), and differentiating between the various major and minor contributions that lead to impact is a significant challenge. What is Evaluation in education : concept, defination, importance and What indicators, evidence, and impacts need to be captured within developing systems. Without measuring and evaluating their performance, teachers will not be able to determine how much the students have learned. Why should this be the case? Figure 1, replicated from Hughes and Martin (2012), illustrates how the ease with which impact can be attributed decreases with time, whereas the impact, or effect of complementary assets, increases, highlighting the problem that it may take a considerable amount of time for the full impact of a piece of research to develop but because of this time and the increase in complexity of the networks involved in translating the research and interim impacts, it is more difficult to attribute and link back to a contributing piece of research. Classroom Assessment -- (sometime referred to as Course-based Assessment) - is a process of gathering data on student learning during the educational experience, designed to help the instructor determine which concepts or skills the students are not learning well, so that steps may be taken to improve the students' learning while the course is Definition and Examples of Evaluation Essays - ThoughtCo What emerged on testing the MICE taxonomy (Cooke and Nadim 2011), by mapping impacts from case studies, was that detailed categorization of impact was found to be too prescriptive. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. The time lag between research and impact varies enormously. The first attempt globally to comprehensively capture the socio-economic impact of research across all disciplines was undertaken for the Australian Research Quality Framework (RQF), using a case study approach. 0000007967 00000 n Although based on the RQF, the REF did not adopt all of the suggestions held within, for example, the option of allowing research groups to opt out of impact assessment should the nature or stage of research deem it unsuitable (Donovan 2008). The development of tools and systems for assisting with impact evaluation would be very valuable. Assessment Definition - The Glossary of Education Reform (2007) adapted the terminology of the Payback Framework, developed for the health and biomedical sciences from benefit to impact when modifying the framework for the social sciences, arguing that the positive or negative nature of a change was subjective and can also change with time, as has commonly been highlighted with the drug thalidomide, which was introduced in the 1950s to help with, among other things, morning sickness but due to teratogenic effects, which resulted in birth defects, was withdrawn in the early 1960s. One might consider that by funding excellent research, impacts (including those that are unforeseen) will follow, and traditionally, assessment of university research focused on academic quality and productivity. 2010; Hanney and Gonzlez-Block 2011) and can be thought of in two parts: a model that allows the research and subsequent dissemination process to be broken into specific components within which the benefits of research can be studied, and second, a multi-dimensional classification scheme into which the various outputs, outcomes, and impacts can be placed (Hanney and Gonzalez Block 2011). different meanings for different people in many different contexts. In endeavouring to assess or evaluate impact, a number of difficulties emerge and these may be specific to certain types of impact. The inherent technical disparities between the two different software packages and the adjustment . Incorporating assessment of the wider socio-economic impact began using metrics-based indicators such as Intellectual Property registered and commercial income generated (Australian Research Council 2008). If metrics are available as impact evidence, they should, where possible, also capture any baseline or control data. Here we address types of evidence that need to be captured to enable an overview of impact to be developed. 1.3. Also called evaluative writing, evaluative essay or report, and critical evaluation essay . These techniques have the potential to provide a transformation in data capture and impact assessment (Jones and Grant 2013). (2005), Wooding et al. Case studies are ideal for showcasing impact, but should they be used to critically evaluate impact? Over the past year, there have been a number of new posts created within universities, such as writing impact case studies, and a number of companies are now offering this as a contract service. Organizations may be interested in reviewing and assessing research impact for one or more of the aforementioned purposes and this will influence the way in which evaluation is approached. They are often written with a reader from a particular stakeholder group in mind and will present a view of impact from a particular perspective. We suggest that developing systems that focus on recording impact information alone will not provide all that is required to link research to ensuing events and impacts, systems require the capacity to capture any interactions between researchers, the institution, and external stakeholders and link these with research findings and outputs or interim impacts to provide a network of data.

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