Missiological research: Making impact or missing the mark?

Abstract

This article explores ways of conceptualizing research impact and its assessment in the context of missiological research. Can it be assumed that there is a link between missiological research knowledge and research impact on mission practice and practitioners? First, the author defines and discusses some key concepts – research impact, impact assessment, academic impact and societal impact – as well as conceptual frameworks of and approaches to research impact assessment. The author then begins to conceptualize a framework for linking research to practice in missiological research which can be further developed into a framework for research impact assessment.

Keywords

Missiological research research impact research impact assessment academic impact societal impact Research Excellence Framework

Introduction

We are currently living in unprecedented times, where data-driven, research-based decisions and actions are more important than ever before in history. But even if decisions and actions are informed by the new knowledge created by research, how do we find out what sorts of differences and how much of a difference, if any, have resulted? In other words, how do we assess the impact of research? In this introductory article, we look at how to think about research impact in the context of missiological research. Can we assume that there is a link between missiological research knowledge and research impact on mission practice and practitioners? How can we assess what kind of change in mission practice, if any, is created by missiological research? In order to address the overarching questions, we first need to understand some key concepts and issues from the field of research impact assessment: How do we define research impact and impact assessment? What are the purposes of research impact assessment? What are the conceptual frameworks of and approaches to research impact assessment? By understanding and applying these concepts, we can ask: How do we understand the impact of missiological research? How do we link missiological research and its impact? We can then begin to conceptualize a framework for linking research to practice in missiological research which can be further developed into a framework for research impact assessment.

Background

In recent decades, the role of the university in general and the value and contribution of academic research to wider society in particular have been called into question (Watermeyer, 2012), and ‘[p]erformance-based funding systems are one of many innovations that have characterised significant changes in the university sector’ (Williams and Grant, 2018: 93). As a result, ‘there has been an increasing demand to make explicit the purpose of each research endeavour and the difference or impact it will make or has made’ (Chandler, 2014: 4). Chandler (2014: 4–5) explicates this change as ‘a paradigm shift’ in how academia views research in relation to its impact from implicit to explicit, serendipity to investment, and academic excellence to excellence with impact. This shift within academia has been influenced by the attitudes and behaviours of research stakeholder communities, especially research funders, who are increasingly demanding a return on their investments. As a headline from The Times shows: ‘Prove the benefits of research or lose funds, universities told’ (Hurst and Henderson, 2010). The pressure to show the value of research for the broader society is something that cannot be ignored by researchers and research communities, especially if funding is from the public purse.

Definition of ‘research impact’ and ‘impact assessment’

The term ‘impact’ is understood differently by different users and audiences. Similarly, the term ‘research impact’ is delineated in different settings with different phrases, such as ‘research returns’, ‘research benefits’ and ‘research value’. Irrespective of the terminology used, the driving force behind the increased attention to research impact in academia is to link research with its effects beyond academia and in the broader society (Doyle, 2018). Although the UK is generally regarded as the leader in research evaluation, the concept of ‘impact assessment’ is relatively new; until about a decade ago, the focus of research quality assessment in the UK research community was on ‘the quality of research outputs and the vitality of the research centre’ (McCormack, 2011: 112). In order to determine the level of funding that UK higher education institutions will be awarded, a national framework for assessing research quality and impact – the Research Excellence Framework (REF) – was launched in 2014. It was organized by the Higher Education Funding Council for England on behalf of the funding bodies for universities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For the first time, research impact was added to the other two key elements – research outputs and research environment – in the assessment of university research quality/excellence (Higher Education Funding Council, 2011b). As discussed below, in other research impact frameworks, academic outputs can be considered to be part of research impact, but they are categorized and included under research outputs in the UK REF. Therefore, research impact has its own category focusing on benefits beyond academia, and is defined very broadly as: ‘benefits to one or more areas of the economy, society, culture, public policy and services, health, production, environment, international development or quality of life, whether locally, regionally, nationally or internationally’ (Higher Education Funding Council, 2012: 27). Thus, in the UK REF, research impact is exclusively defined by contributions to societal benefit in the real world.According to the Russell Group, which includes 24 research-intensive universities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, nine different kinds of societal impact have been identified: economic, policy, social, health, cultural, environmental, technological, legal and global. These various types of societal impact were categorized based on an analysis of 240 impact case studies that were submitted to the 2014 REF by Russell Group universities (Russell Group, 2015). The range of these societal impacts is broad and

can be manifested in a wide variety of ways including, but not limited to: the many types of beneficiary (individuals, organisations, communities, regions and other entities); impacts on products, processes, behaviours, policies, practices; and avoidance of harm or the waste of resources. (Higher Education Funding Council, 2012: 27)

By definition, research impact includes a variety of benefits to a wide range of beneficiaries. In this case, how are research and impact linked? What does a framework linking research and impact look like? Before we explore different research impact assessment frameworks, it would be helpful to elucidate the purposes of assessing research impact.

Purposes of research impact assessment

According to Penfield et al. (2014: 22), there are four main purposes for assessing research impact. The first is to improve accountability to various stakeholders. For publicly funded research, research impact assessments enhance accountability to taxpayers, voters and the public. Higher education institutions that receive government research grants are required to demonstrate value or a return for publicly funded research, showing that it generates real-world impact. The second purpose is to track research impact assessments. Tracking research impact helps higher education institutions not only to improve accountability but also to monitor and manage their performance. For example, research performance is one of the criteria for the World University Rankings, which are associated with institutional prestige and reputation. On an individual level, the productivity of academics is measured and used as a criterion for recruitment selection, funding, promotions and bonuses. The third purpose is to attract and retain funders and donors by showcasing the value for money of research impact, especially the socio-economic benefits to society. Future funding decisions are dependent on and influenced by evidence-based impact evaluation. The final purpose is to develop better ways of delivering impact to maximize research findings by better understanding the method and routes by which research leads to impacts. For over a decade, in UK research grant applications, researchers must fill out a section called ‘Pathway to Impact’. They had to ‘detail the actions they will take to increase the chances of their research findings reaching key stakeholders’ which contributed to cultural change that ‘[i]mpact is now a core consideration throughout the grant application process’ (UK Research and Innovation, 2020). Improving accountability and performance for a diversity of stakeholder communities is the main purpose of research impact assessment. Once the purposes for assessing research impact have been understood, frameworks and approaches for research impact assessment can be conceptualized.

Research impact assessment framework

Research impact has been theorized in many different ways, and various models and frameworks linking research to impact have been proposed. Greenhalgh et al. (2016) identified the six most robust approaches based on underpinning philosophical assumptions: the payback framework, the research impact framework, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences framework, monetization models, societal impact assessment, and the UK Research Excellence Framework. These frameworks can be largely divided into two camps: the logic model and the complex system model. The logic model, such as the payback framework of impact, depicts the research–impact link (input–activities–output–impact) in a more linear way, following a pipeline of an input at the beginning of the research to an output at the end of the research system. In this model, the research–impact link is seen as a cause-and-effect relationship – that is, Research A is a cause of Impact B – although it is very rare, if not impossible, to be able to make a causal link (LSE Public Policy Group, 2011). Usually, research impact is indirect and non-linear, and requires the complex system model for assessment and evaluation. Although ‘[s]hort-term proximate impacts are easier to attribute’, research benefits may accumulate over time, which makes it very difficult to attribute them to a particular project (Greenhalgh et al., 2016: 2). Even in a short-term cycle, it is very difficult to make a direct causal link from a specific piece of research to a benefit in society because of multiple attributable factors and influences requiring a complex framework for assessing research impact. For example, how do we account for the long-term impact of research beyond an assessment period? How do we account for interim benefits from complementary assets such as diverse networks and relationships among multiple stakeholders, which are harder to measure, if not impossible to capture (Hughes and Martin, 2012)?

Because of the complex nature of research impact assessment, the London School of Economics Public Policy Group’s (2011) research impact ‘handbook for social scientists’ defines research impact as ‘a recorded or otherwise auditable occasion of influence from academic research on another actor or organization’ (5). The shift from causality to occasions of influence broadens the boundaries of how to capture and track research impact. It also reflects the complexity and various ways of demonstrating impact. In the London School of Economics Public Policy Group’s framework, a research impact consists of two parts: academic and external. The former research impacts are ‘influences upon actors in academia or universities, e.g. as measured by citations in other academic authors’ work’; the latter are ‘influences on actors outside higher education, that is, in business, government or civil society’ (5). Since it is not realistic to verify direct causal links from ‘one author or piece of work to output changes or to social outcomes’, and also ‘[c]hanges in organizational outputs and social outcomes are always attributable to multiple forces and influences’, it is important to note that ‘a research impact is an occasion of influence’ and therefore is ‘not the same thing as a change in outputs or activities as a result of that influence, still less a change in social outcomes’ (5). Despite the complexities and challenges, the impact agenda has been promoted, and the process of research impact assessment has been adopted in various impact assessment metrics in the UK and elsewhere. Measuring and evaluating the overall impact of university research includes both academic impact and societal impact, whether academic impact is categorized under research outputs or research impact.

Academic impact

Citation-based metrics, known as bibliometrics, are the statistical analysis of bibliographic data and are increasingly used to evaluate research and scholarship ‘in all unit levels: article, author, research group, institution, discipline, country, so on’ (Lasda, 2019: 1). Traditionally, the success of a researcher was measured by their number of publications in peer-reviewed journals, and these figures can be easily retrieved from any major research database, such as PubMed, Scopus or Web of Science. However, they are not uniform across fields. In recent decades, a wide array of scholarly metrics and tools has been introduced and can be utilized depending on the units of analysis mentioned above. According to their unit of analysis, here are some examples of the most widely used metrics: for high-impact journals, one can check the journal impact factor, which was originally used by librarians to evaluate the quality and influence of an academic journal. The h-index is one of the most prevalent metrics to measure individual scholarly activity. Along with Plum Analytics, Altmetric is one of the most well-known article-level metrics. In addition to traditional citation counts, article-level metrics are increasingly inclusive of complementary social media content such as hits and citations on the Internet, downloads and mentions in tweets (Agarwal et al., 2016). Citation-based metrics can be very useful, but they are quantitative measures and open to gamesmanship and misuse (Lasda, 2019). As the famous adage goes: ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure because we start to game it’.

How does the UK REF use citation information? Following an extensive pilot study, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (2009:11) concluded that ‘[b]ibliometrics are not sufficiently mature to be used formulaically as a sole indicator or to replace expert review, but there is considerable scope for citation indicators to inform and supplement expert review of outputs’. Therefore, while not all units of assessment will make use of citation-based metrics, some subpanels (such as medicine, biological and physical sciences, and engineering) will make use of them, as robust data is available (Higher Education Funding Council, 2009). Although in the UK REF the quality of research outputs is not part of assessing research impact per se, it is considered ‘the most direct measure’ of research excellence and ‘the foundation’ on which impacts can be built (Higher Education Funding Council, 2009). The UK REF uses three main criteria for assessing outputs: originality, rigour and significance. Discipline-based expert panels undertake the assessment through a process of expert review – that is, peer review or the judgement of experts. An expert subpanel for each of the 36 units of assessment belongs to and works under the guidance of one of the four main panels (Higher Education Funding Council, 2011a). Measuring academic impact and quality, whether or not it utilizes quantitative/statistical metrics, should depend on the judgement of experts in the field. Moreover, the impacts of research should move beyond academia into the real world.

Societal impact

Since aspects of societal impacts are not easily measurable and quantifiable, in the UK REF a more qualitative and narrative method was chosen for assessing impact. After having gone through a pilot study, the UK REF adopted a mixed-methods case study approach to assess impact in 2014, and it plans to use the case study approach again for the upcoming REF 2021. Although REF case studies are ‘a long way from being an accurate reflection of impact’ (Khazragui and Hudson, 2015: 51), ‘the mixed-methods case study approach is an excellent means of pulling all available information, data, and evidence together, allowing a comprehensive summary of the impact within context’ (Penfield et al., 2014: 30). The REF expert subpanels evaluate research impact against criteria of reach (how widely the impacts have been felt) and significance (how transformative the impacts have been). ‘Reach’ is defined as ‘the extent and/or diversity of the beneficiaries of the impact, as relevant to the nature of the impact’, which will be evaluated ‘in terms of the extent to which the potential constituencies, number or groups of beneficiaries have been reached; it will not be assessed in purely geographic terms, nor in terms of absolute numbers of beneficiaries’ (Higher Education Funding Council, 2019: 52). The significance of societal impacts is much broader than academic impacts, and is defined as ‘the degree to which the impact has enabled, enriched, influenced, informed or changed the performance, policies, practices, products, services, understanding, awareness or wellbeing of the beneficiaries’ (Higher Education Funding Council, 2019: 52).

Because of the various types of societal impact, impact case studies are presented with ‘a wide range of types of evidence, including qualitative, quantitative and tangible or material evidence, as appropriate’ (Higher Education Funding Council, 2019: 55). This means that ‘a diversity of ways to assess impact’ is necessary (Joly and Matt, 2017: 11). Both research impact criteria (reach and significance) are assessed together, rather than separately, because the balance between them may vary at all quality levels. Therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach to assessing research impact does not work and requires further research to develop various approaches and frameworks. Based on an understanding of some of the key concepts of research impact and impact assessment discussed so far, we can now turn to a consideration of research impact in the context of missiological research.

Impact of missiological research

Underutilization of missiological research by mission practitioners

According to Farrell’s (2018) study, missiological research is underutilized by mission practitioners; he reported that the majority of the decision-makers who allocate ‘human and financial resources for mission operate with little or no awareness of the body of missiological research’ (39). If mission practitioners are not even aware of the availability of the body of missiological knowledge, how are they expected to look for new knowledge, let alone apply that knowledge to their practice? This is not unique – in the case of clinicians such as physicians and nurses, they rarely accessed and followed explicit recommendations for change from published research (Gabbay and Le May, 2004). With regard to clinicians, they are perhaps aware of a body of research that they could tap into but do not necessarily look for relevant information from research, but from their ‘professional communities of practice’ (Greenhalgh and Fahy, 2015: 2).

According to Cronshaw (2020: 53), however, most of the participants in his research project reported that ‘churches, like other industry bodies, look for relevant research’. This is contrary to Farrell’s (2018) point above regarding the lack of awareness of a body of missiological research on the part of mission practitioners. How does one understand this discrepancy? In Cronshaw’s (2020) research, his participants were 18 senior research faculty members who worked mainly in theological education and Christian higher education, with a few in university religious studies and social impact research. Nonetheless, all of Cronshaw’s research participants were academics. Conversely, Farrell’s (2018) 116 survey participants included mission agency executives, long- and short-term missionaries, local church/parish mission leaders and short-term mission-trip participants. In other words, these mission decision-makers were mission practitioners. The academics’ perception in Cronshaw’s (2020) study that practitioners seek relevant research, contrary to common practice, seems to reinforce the gap between the academy and mission practice (Farrell, 2018).

The gap between theory (missiological research) and practice (mission practice)

Farrell (2018) calls this disconnect a chasm when he points out that there is ‘a gap between what mission practitioners need and what missiology is offering’ (40). In Farrell’s survey of 116 mission practitioners, the following three topic areas were identified as being most needed for their mission practice: ‘cultural competence (the culture concept, cross-cultural communication, cross-cultural conflict transformation, etc.), sustainability (avoiding dependency, basic development practices, “exit strategies,” etc.), and the programmatic (short-term mission, best practices, how congregations can improve the effectiveness of their mission work, etc.)’ (39). To compare these survey results, Farrell identified the three most important US missiological journals – Evangelical Missions Quarterly, International Bulletin of Mission Research and Missiology – and analysed the subject topics of the articles published between 2014 and 2016. During the three years analysed, the three missiological journals gave very little attention to the topics of interest to mission decision-makers and practitioners, such as specific mission strategies or intercultural communication or partnerships (40). In the USA, most mission decision-makers are not professionally trained workers but volunteers, who are not necessarily well informed in mission history and the body of missiological knowledge. This situation inevitably ‘condemns them to repeat the painful mistakes of the past’ and ‘billions of dollars and untold numbers of human hours are used annually in mission strategies of questioned effectiveness that critics say serve primarily to increase donor satisfaction rather than advance God’s mission’ (44). It is clear that today’s new mission decision-makers and practitioners need to be better informed so that their mission practices are shaped by evidence-driven and research-based missiological knowledge. How can we bridge the chasm between academia and practice?

A framework for linking missiological research to mission practice

How do we link missiological research to mission practice in a way that is relevant and useful to mission practitioners? How does missiological knowledge created by research move from academia to the potential user of that knowledge (Farrell, 2018)? The bridge will not appear automatically unless explicit knowledge-exchange strategies are in place. In a report titled ‘Effective practice in knowledge exchange’ prepared by Research Consulting (2016: 8) for the Higher Education Funding Council for England, four areas of academic activities and mechanisms for knowledge exchange were identified: educating people, increasing the stock of ‘codified knowledge’, providing public space and problem-solving. In the context of missiological research, this means that a strategic plan for knowledge exchange begins with training skilled seminary students and equipping them with existing and new knowledge so that when they become mission pastors and directors, they can apply that knowledge. However, as Priest (2008: v) points out, US seminary curricula are inadequate in preparing new mission leaders, let alone equipping them with new research-based knowledge.

One way to disseminate knowledge is through publication and, indeed, academics everywhere are keenly aware of the importance of ‘publish or perish’ for their personal performance evaluation. However, more broadly, publishing new research results in academic journals does not automatically mean that potential users will read them; Farrell’s 2017 survey showed that 62% of his participants had not read a single article in any of the three most reputable US missiological journals over the previous three years (Farrell, 2018: 38). Therefore, new knowledge does not translate into practice through publication on its own. It requires intentional engagement with user communities through providing public spaces such as meetings and conferences. Even in this scenario, one cannot assume that mission practitioners will attend these meetings; Farrell’s 2017 survey showed that 86% of his participants had not attended a meeting of any missiological society in the past five years Farrell, 2018: 38.

A good way to promote knowledge exchange is through direct engagement between academics and stakeholder communities via collaborative or contract research. The previous example indicates that knowledge exchange involves a two-way transaction, not just a one-way hierarchical transfer of knowledge from the knowledge source to the knowledge user. In this Mode 2 knowledge production, the knowledge user is part of the knowledge production and becomes a co-producer/co-researcher in the research and innovation in a globalized and complex world. In this collaborative research environment, the user community is involved in co-producing knowledge as active participants. They are part of the process of finding the solution to the multifaceted problems that they are facing. In order to solve such problems, new knowledge and a transdisciplinary approach that involves many possible stakeholders and multiple accountabilities are required (Beerkens, 2008: 21–22). As can be seen in Farrell’s (2018) survey of mission leaders, there is a discrepancy between what they think they need and what the body of missiological research offers. What if research starts with some problems that mission leaders experience in the real world? However, mission practitioners also acknowledge the fact that they need academics to help them understand the problems and frame, design and conduct a rigorous and systemic investigation of the phenomena studied.

Borrowing from the idea of ‘activist anthropology’ pioneered by Charles Hale and others, Farrell introduces the idea of an activist researcher who

would favour ‘use-inspired’ research needs and seek out partnerships with mission practitioners to not only gather and analyse missiological knowledge, but to diffuse the knowledge through teaching, training, speaking, and writing, extending missiologists’ reach via practitioners’ innumerable social and professional networks. (Farrell, 2018: 47)

For the multiple stakeholders in the mission research community of practice, the goal of the group is to share best practices in order to maximize research impact by sharing resources, challenges, learning and opportunities. Knowledge exchange in the context of missiological research would require intentional exchange activities between researchers and research users through various means.

Conclusion

To enhance impact-driven missiological research is to strengthen the links between research and mission practices. As described above, activist missiology can be used as a framework for linking missiological research and practice, and can also be further developed into a framework for research impact assessment. However, currently, it appears that research impact in general and research impact assessment in particular have been little studied by researchers in the context of missiological research. The aim of this article has been to introduce this topic and to issue a call for more research to better understand the impact of the transformative effects of missiological research and the assessment of research impact. Ultimately, the purpose of missiological research is to serve the church and society. Missiological researchers, mission practitioners, research funders and donors, and research institutions are responsible for enhancing the faithfulness and effectiveness of their engagement in God’s mission in the context of missiological research. As Christ-followers called to participate in the Missio Dei, ultimately, who are we accountable to for our time, talent and resources?

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Hae-Won Kim (PhD) is a research tutor at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies in the UK.

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