This is the question at the centre of a new UKRI Policy Fellowship hosted by the Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP).
UKRI Policy Fellowships give researchers the opportunity to spend 18 months embedded within government departments, public bodies and What Works Centres (the latter of which focus specifically on using evidence to improve public services). Fellows co-design and deliver research projects with their hosts while learning about how evidence is used in practice. Host organisations, in turn, benefit from fellows’ specialist expertise to address key policy questions.
My fellowship focuses on how What Works Centres, and knowledge-brokering organisations more broadly, can better understand and capture the impact of their work.
My previous research has explored what happens when policy meets practice, with a particular focus on language policy in educational settings. Having worked on policy questions in international contexts such as Spain and Cabo Verde, this fellowship offers an opportunity to turn to the UK context and explore an earlier part of the policy journey – how evidence informs policymaking and, more specifically, how organisations that connect evidence with policy can better capture their impact.
Understanding this process matters because funders increasingly ask researchers to explain how their work will make a difference beyond academia. Universities, too, invest significant time and resources in evidencing and evaluating research impact. Notably, discussions about impact often focus on two things: the research itself and the changes that result from it. Less attention is paid to everything that happens in between research and impact.
This is particularly true in the context of public policy, where research rarely influences policy in a direct way. Evidence is discussed, interpreted and indeed challenged. It moves through organisations and networks before informing policy discussions. By the time it does, its contribution may be difficult to disentangle from the many other influences shaping decision making.
Understanding what happens in this 'in-between' space is exactly the challenge that my fellowship seeks to address. It explores the role that people, relationships and organisations play in connecting evidence with decision making, and why understanding their contribution matters for capturing impact.
Over the coming months, building on previous work at WCPP which looked at how impact is conceptualised, I will be speaking to colleagues across the UK’s What Works Network to explore the approaches they use to capture their impact, the challenges they encounter, and how they use those experiences to improve their practice.
The aim is to co-develop resources for impact capture and facilitate opportunities for peer learning. This work will also contribute to, and learn from, the Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) Community of Practice on Knowledge Mobilisation, particularly its collaborative work on understanding, capturing and communicating knowledge mobilisation impacts across different organisational contexts.
If you are involved in impact capture activities at a What Works Centre or similar knowledge-brokering organisation, I would be delighted to hear from you.