Impacting Capabilities: A Conceptual Framework for the Social Value of Research

Abstract

There is widespread interest in evaluating the social impacts of research and other scholarly activities. Conventional metrics for social impacts focus on economics or wealth creation, such as patents or technology transfer. These kinds of metrics are less appropriate for many scholarly fields, and miss the specific social concerns or needs that researchers aim to address. In this paper, drawing on ideas from ethics and development economics, we develop a conceptual framework for characterizing the social goals of research. We first distinguish resources-such as wealth and intellectual credit-from the goals of scholarship, and further distinguish inward-and outward-facing goals. Outward-facing goals refer to the intended social impacts of research. Next we introduce the Capabilities Approach, a conceptual framework for human well-being developed by ethicists and economists over the last 40 years. This Approach focuses on basic human needs, rather than wealth, and we draw specifically on a list of central human capabilities developed by philosopher Martha Nussbaum. We propose that the items on this list provide a useful starting point for articulating the specific social aims of research. We argue that the Capabilities Approach can facilitate research communication and improve the recognition of public engagement in academic and funding institutions. Familiar bibliographic data and text mining methods can be used in a capabilities-inspired portfolio analysis, and modest changes to existing data collection systems-for tenure and promotion, or research funding applications-could support the development of even richer capabilities-inspired metrics and incentive systems.

Do altmetrics assess societal impact in a comparable way to case studies? An empirical test of the convergent validity of altmetrics based on data from the UK research excellence framework (REF)

“…Whereas Pollitt et al (2016) used the survey-based BWS method to explore valuable and group-specific directions of impact measurements, Hicks, Stahmer, and Smith (2018) propose to use lists of central capabilities (e.g., the set of basic human needs and values by Nussbaum, 2000) and to translate the capabilities into metrics. Whereas the approach by Pollitt et al (2016) seems to be suitable for developing metrics for specific evaluation contexts (e.g., which focus on certain groups or fields), the approach by Hicks et al (2018) might be useful in large-scale evaluations such as the UK REF (or similar national evaluation systems) including many units from various disciplines.…”

Do national funding organizations properly address the diseases with the highest burden?: Observations from China and the UK

“…Nobel Prize winner Patrick Blackett believes the curiosity of researchers should be the primary driver of advances in science (Anderson, 1999;Blackett, 1971). Meanwhile, Hicks et al (2018) assert that scholarly research should be accompanied by both inward-and outward-facing goals motived by social practices and the broader impact of science. Moreover, some researchers have developed a framework for responsible innovation to address social and ethical concerns and to underpin a practical and systematic approach to governance (Stilgoe et al, 2013).…”

Altmetrics and societal impact measurements: Match or mismatch? A literature review

“…Inward-facing goals of research include the benefits of research for the scientific community, such as the production of new methodologies, techniques or conceptual models. Outward-facing goals refer to the benefit of research for society outside the scientific community (Hicks et al, 2018). In recent decades, there has been an increasing demand for outward-facing objectives, which is also reflected in popular concepts such as Mode 2 knowledge production or the triple helix, a model of university-industry-government relations (De-Jong et al, 2011;Etzkowitz;Leydesdorff, 2000).…”