You, our audience, tell us that you spend a lot of time and energy trying to work out what is the impact of your individual research project or programme (check out R2A’s Impact Practitioners initiative to find more than 200 guides and toolkits to help you do this). Imagine how useful it would be if someone looked across thousands of projects to identify patterns of impact. There’d be so much to learn.

Someone has!

The UK Collaborative on Development Research (UKCDR) has looked across the 6,361 impact case studies that were submitted to REF 2021 and reviewed 891 that are focused on international development research.  The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a national peer-review assessment of the quality and impact of UK research in Higher Education Institutions. (If you’re interested in learning more about planning for impact from the outset when submitting case studies to the REF, read our Impact Practitioners summary Seven lessons about impact case studies from REF21.)

They explored four categories of impact demonstrated by the 891 case studies: conceptual (perspectives or debates), instrumental (policy and practice), learning and development (capacity strengthening), and networks and connectivity (partnerships). And have produced an interactive visualisation of their analysis. The Research Impact Data Tool allows you to search by type and location of impact; by funder; and by contribution to SDGs.

The tool complements UKCDR’s 2023 report, The Landscape of UK-funded Development Research. It’s well worth a look to see what worked, and sometimes an explanation of why.