Knowing your audience

R2A: Polling our audience

By 10/10/2018

Research to Action has crowdsourced answers to questions relating to research communications and impact. In the spirit of sharing to continually improve strategies and outcomes, here is a summary of our findings for a selection of the side bar polls.

Q1. In what area would you find more training most useful? 

You can follow the hyperlinks to browse the topic-specific archives. 

Q2. Do you feel confident communicating development research that has a specific focus on gender? 

  • Yes, very 63%
  • Somewhat 23%
  • Not at all 12%
  • Not applicable 2%

Interested in finding out more about gender and communicating development research? Lata Narayanaswamy shared the motivations for and the findings of her new book Reflections on Gender, Power and Knowledge for Development in an ‘Uptake Anecdote’.  

Q3. What topics would you find most useful to explore in the next R2A webinar series? 

  • Design, Branding and Infographics 35%
  • Monitoring and Evaluation 29%
  • Research Impact 26%
  • Social Media 9%

After feedback from the first webinar series ‘A cup of tea with’ we extended the webinars from half an hour to a full hour, convening virtual Roundtables with a group of people to compare and discuss aspects of research uptake in more detail.

Q4. When do you think it is important to start planning for and working on enabling research uptake? 

  • Research design 72% 
  • Start of project 19% 
  • Mid-point of project 6% 
  • When project outputs are produced 3% 

Encouragingly, respondents agreed with Rosalind Goodrich from IIED that research communications and uptake must be embedded into the research design phase to have any chance of success.  

Q5. Live tweeting at academic conferences is… 

  • Important 49% 
  • A distraction 24% 
  • Really important 20% 
  • Too time-consuming 8% 

Want to know more about the value of live tweeting at academic conferences? Read Sudeep Upretty’s top tips for live tweeting at conferences to improve research uptake.  

Q6. Which donor would you find most useful to have more guidance and updates about research uptake on R2A? 

  • DFID 45% 
  • IDRC 22% 
  • USAID 18% 
  • SIDA 12% 
  • NORAD 3% 

Want to know more about DFID’s guidance on research uptake? Read a roundup of their 2016 research uptake news, their updated guidance note on research uptake for DFID-funded programmes, and the Theory of Change How To section which was designed with DFID-funded programmes in mind.

Do you have a question that you would like to ask the crowd about research communication and impact? Get in touch with the team via the general enquiries email to find out how to contribute a sidebar poll and what it involves.  

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