Improved knowledge, increased awareness and new strengthened relationships are the three main types of impacts that Science Shops have on their communities, identified in a new report by the EU Horizon 2020 SciShops.eu project. The report contains an analysis of the impacts of 31 Science Shops and is now available.

Over the past months, SciShops.eu has been investigating the impacts of Science Shops and the benefits that are brought to stakeholders by undertaking research in response to questions raised by civil society. The report contains an analysis of the impacts of 31 Science Shops, located both in Europe and beyond. Out of these, 23 were university-based and eight non-university-based Science Shops, covering a diverse range of research fields.

An adapted version of the ‘post-project evaluation questionnaire’ developed by the EU PERARES project formed the basis of the impact evaluation. The Science Shops’ activities were evaluated based on the outcomes of their projects, identified through desk research, using publicly available information, such as websites, reports and media articles.

Impacts on researchers

The analysis showed that in more than fifty percent of cases of Science Shops, the projects:

• increased stakeholders’ knowledge of how research is done (74%)
• helped to develop ongoing relationships between academics and civil society organisations (74%);
• increased researchers’ interest in the subject (58%);
• influenced the direction of further research (55%);
• showed the prospect to produce long-term impacts for the community, such as increased awareness of issues, changes to public policy or legislation, and the development of new programmes or services (52%)

Impacts on internal and external stakeholders

The analysis particularly focused on the impacts on both internal stakeholders (those involved in the projects) and external stakeholders. For example, students that were involved in undertaking the projects:

• gained new knowledge and skills from the process of conducting research on real-life problems;
• became accustomed with the concept and practice of social responsibility;
• strengthened their professional reputation, for example, through the publication of the research results and participation in conferences.

Impacts on civil society organisations

Impacts on external stakeholders, such as the civil society organisations requesting the research, or broader society included:

• improvement of programmes or services offered by CSOs;
• increased trust in and awareness on the potential of research to better understand or solve societal issues;
• the initiation of new collaborations;
• increased citizen awareness/understanding of the issues and active involvement in tackling the problems;
• citizens learning about the implementation of research projects through direct involvement in the process;
• improvements to quality of life (for example, in terms of health, the environment, education or wealth)

Impacts on the science shops

• Increased influence of the research outcomes on the choice of subsequent research topics;
• Increased the interest of academics and students in community-based participatory research;
• Increased number of research requests;
• Expansion of collaborations and networking;
• Established new Science Shops.

Conclusions and findings

The findings concluded that science shops have a wide range of impacts, both immediate and long-term, although in many cases long-term impacts had to be inferred due to a lack of publicly-available information. Little evidence was found that projects include an impact assessment stage, indicating that few Science Shops conduct an impact evaluation of their projects. This reinforces the findings of several case studies undertaken by SciShops.eu, which showed that longer-term impact is often only described in an anecdotal manner, based on ongoing relationships of civil society actors, with Science Shops often lacking time and resources to carry out evaluations.

SciShops.eu will use the findings to inform the development of the planed ten Science Shops being set up during the project and the production of new tools and resources.

Read the full report “Existing Science Shops assessment”

Links

Report Existing Science Shop assessment https://www.scishops.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/SciShops.eu_D2.5-Existing-Science-Shops-assessment.pdf

Project SciShops https://project.scishops.eu/

SciShops Platform https://www.scishops.eu/

Keywords

Science Shops, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Citizen Science