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The ‘pathway’ model of impact

From research inputs to benefits, with engagement throughout

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The process by which impact happens can be unpredictable and surprising as it involves others using or engaging with your research. However, theoretical models of the research impact process can still be useful tools to help you think about and plan for impact.

Read time: 5 min 

Key takeaways

  • The impact pathway is a causal chain from research inputs to benefits, involving stakeholder engagement.
  • Use the pathway to analyse past impacts and also plan for future impact.
  • Beware the limitations of this linear model; explore other engagement-centred models that recognise non-linearity.
  • Impact occurs along a continuum, and the more there is uptake of your research and time goes by, the more the downstream benefits will eventually be demonstrable.

The canonical 'pathway' model of impact

The ‘pathway to impact’ is the concept of a causal chain from research inputs (e.g. funding, expertise), to research outputs (e.g. publications, patents), to uptake and adoption of those outputs, and finally to the realisation of impacts (benefits). 

Engagement with users and others can take place all along the impact pathway.

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Impact is a continuum

One quandary the pathway model may create is whether there is a threshold for impact – a point on the pathway after which the consequences of your research suddenly resolve or solidify into ‘impact’? In other words, when on this pathway does impact ‘begin’? And are some effects too inconsequential to be considered bona fide impact? Will it take years until impact emerges from your research? 

Rather than adopting a ‘threshold’ approach to impact, it’s more useful to think of impact occurring along a continuum that encompasses adoption as well as the resulting downstream benefits.

Breaking down each stage in the pathway

STAGE EXAMPLES

Inputs

Resources that enable research

  • Funding
  • Staff time
  • Infrastructure
  • In-kind contributions.

Research activities

Research and related activities

  • Research work that produces new knowledge/theories/methods/tools/etc.
  • Building or leveraging collaborations and partnerships
  • Running workshops, training.

Outputs

Tangible or usable products of research

  • Papers, books, conference proceedings, reports, NTROs
  • New tools, technologies, data in a repository
  • Patents
  • Websites, resources, educational materials
  • New services.

Adoption/outcomes

Outputs or findings taken up, building awareness, or implemented.

(The terms ‘adoption’, ‘outcomes’, or even ‘uptake’ are sometimes used interchangeably)

Academic impact:

  • Research community awareness (e.g. podcast, editorial, socials)
  • Other researchers use, adapt, or are enabled by new knowledge/tools/theories/data
  • Longstanding problem solved.

Real world impact:

  • Stakeholder awareness (e.g. clinician, industry, public). It is even better if you can show resulting changes in perspective, comprehension, behaviour.
  • Outputs/products/services accessed by stakeholders. It is even better if you can show these things have been demonstrably used, not just accessed.
  • Incorporation into guidelines/policy. It is even better if you can show that the guidelines have also been adopted.

Benefits

Longer term benefits arising from adoption

Academic impact:

  • New findings by other researchers arising from using/adapting your work
  • Benefits for research or the academy arising from your new knowledge/tools/theories/data.

Real world impact:

  • Improved health outcomes
  • Environmental benefits
  • Cultural benefits
  • Money saved or made
  • Improvements in social wellbeing
  • Jobs created.

The ARC defines this pathway as an ‘analysis or plan which identifies causal links by which research achieves or will achieve its impact’. Understanding it as an analysis or plan is helpful:

 

Alternative models of impact

The canonical model for impact is called a ‘logic model’ because of its stepwise structure. The linearity of this pathway model is simplistic, of course. The route from research to impact is often more complex, and some impacts may even be tangential to the primary intent of the research. For example, research that is co-designed and co-conducted with end-users is likely to deliver impacts during the research process itself, including the upskilling of those end-users.

There are other models of impact that recognise this non-linearity and that also place engagement with users more squarely at the centre of the process.

Real examples of impact

These examples are from University of Sydney researchers in a range of disciplines and at different points along the impact continuum. All of these examples are of real world impact beyond academia. 

You’ll notice there are many more examples of adoption than there are of downstream benefits that flow from adoption. That’s because benefit is a lot more difficult and slow to measure and prove!

  • Adoption: Research cited in over a third of the submissions to the Australian Energy Market Commission that was considering a rule change proposal to establish a National Distributed Energy Storage Register. 
  • Adoption: Curriculum to train social work students on differential response early intervention services has been implemented by the California Social Work Education Centre. 
  • Adoption: Work on party regulation and organisational change cited by the Commonwealth Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in their advisory report on the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill 2017. 
  • Adoption/benefit: Research led to Australian Sign Language (Auslan) interpreters being routinely included in emergency live news telecasts during the Blue Mountains Bushfires in 2013. Now standard in disasters. 
  • Benefit: Seasonal famine intervention adopted by two NGOs in Bangladesh, consequently benefiting ~90,000 people and improving caloric intake by 550-700 cal per person per day (equivalent to an extra meal). 

  • Adoption: Weekly collaborative writing workshops with incarcerated students in a prison in NSW were developed as part of their 'reducing reoffending' strategy. Piloted in 2020, now an ongoing element of the prison's reoffending portfolio. 
  • Adoption: Designed and created six innovative, open-access digital tools and activities for teaching Shakespeare that have been used by educators in Australia, England, Canada and the USA. 
  • Adoption: Legal and policy submissions (e.g. to the NT Water Regulatory Reform, 2019) used by Indigenous organisations and environmental advocates in the NT to inform ongoing advocacy for safe drinking water protections. 
  • Adoption: Excerpt from a Conversation article featured on a display wall at the Australian National Maritime Museum’s 'Guardians of the Sunda Strait' exhibition. 
  • Benefit: Research for a major exhibition of Aboriginal art at Harvard, seen by 85,000, prompted new pigment analyses that add to knowledge of indigenous techniques and pioneered new curatorial approaches. 

  • Adoption: Research featured as one of only 25 case studies across Australia in Austrade’s ‘ASEAN Now - Insights for Australian Business’ report. 
  • Adoption: Research on global value chains adapted for use within the secondary school curriculum under the theme ‘People and Places’. 
  • Adoption/Benefit: Delivery of training in ‘build back safer’ messages resulted in diaspora organisations working with money transfer services in the Philippines to include ‘build back safer’ flyers with remittances after disasters. 
  • Benefit: Research on two properties in Queensland provided the catalyst for Bush Heritage Australia to purchase both in 2004–2005. They now form the second largest conservation reserve in Qld (~447,000 ha). 
  • Benefit: Discovery of new genes for resistance and the development of linked DNA-based markers led to research with the cereal industry on rust resistance breeding, with implementation saving the Australian wheat industry over $600 million a year.

  • Adoption: Research showing pregabalin is not effective for sciatica received >43,000 page views (top 5% Altmetric) and global media coverage, and was used as an NEJM continuing medical education activity. 
  • Adoption: Training program on perinatal mortality guidelines increased awareness and use in 1,200 healthcare professionals trained across Australia and NZ; adapted by others for Fiji, Vietnam, Canada, USA and the Netherlands. 
  • Adoption: Automated systematic deep learning methods for detecting and segmenting tissues or organs deployed in Shanghai Ruijin Hospital and Fudan Cancer Center in China. 
  • Adoption/Benefit: Developed a patented platform technology dry powder inhaler, taken to market via Chiesi Pharmaceutici SPA and Pharmaxis. 
  • Benefit: New hepatitis B ‘screen and treat’ program has been implemented in South West Sydney, subsequently increasing treatment rates in the population by 10%.