A short note on research impact: The public value of the social sciences

During the past few months I have been involved in designing an intensive support pathway for pregnant women who have previously lost children to public care or adoption. The new two-year pathway is an initiative within the Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) National Unit and is funded by the Department for Education. Co-Directors Sophie Kershaw and Mike Shaw of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London are leading the FDAC National Unit and also steering the development of the new pathway. Aiming to maximize women’s chances of retaining care of a newborn infant, the pathway is based on tailored and timely therapeutic help extending over the course of two years, with the same team of professionals. Both the length of commitment to birth mothers and that help is offered early in pregnancy and will continue whether care proceedings are/are not issued, makes this new initiative unique in England. Drawing on the findings from the first stage of our research funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the research team has been able to directly influence the shape of this new pathway, working alongside our practitioner colleagues and a stakeholder group of birth mothers. A group of 10 women who were part of a larger group of 72 mothers participating in the study are now drawn together from across the North, Midlands and from London to help in programme design and evaluation. These women have all experienced court-ordered removal of their own children, but now have a child in their care. The experiences of these women mean that they are uniquely and powerfully positioned to act as advisors to professionals and to serve as mentors for other women who will embark on the new pathway. Working alongside my colleague Claire Mason – lead qualitative researcher – we have experienced this work as social research at its very best. This has been an opportunity to engage in mutually enriching exchange with all stakeholders, to influence practice development for the social good and to pioneer solutions that are democratically designed.

So, how did co-design work? A series of workshops were organized. The first workshop focused on loss and excerpts from birth mother interviews were shared to prompt discussion about the particular nature of grief associated with court-ordered removal of children. Women’s interview accounts made very clear how the legacy of a previous child removal haunts a subsequent pregnancy – the fear of a further removal is ever present and must therefore be addressed in the helping relationship. In a second workshop, we explored the issue of personal agency and the importance of helping women to build a sense of control in their lives. The group considered how we might build personal agency through the key worker relationship placing women firmly in the driving seat of change. A final workshop with birth mothers focused on the design of referral pathways, information about the new initiative and initial engagement. The young women had much to say about our rather dry template letters to parents, advising on radical re-design! Throughout this process, research findings provided rich stimulus material, but also the evidence upon which we could identify and put together the ingredients of the new programme.

It is important to locate this anecdote in the context of broader international debates about research impact. In many respects, the collaborative process that I have described fits neatly with moves in the academy to ensure real-world application of research evidence – few would contest the positive benefits of this example. However, moves towards closer alignment of the objectives of the academy and broader civil society or indeed government and the economy have been fiercely contested. Whilst an impact agenda is now firmly instantiated in how the UK measures research quality, debates continue about the definition of research impact, as well as the acceptable influence of government in shaping research priorities.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in the UK describes research impact as the ‘demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy’ and requires that those seeking grant funding must clearly demonstrate pathways to impact from proposed research. The latest research quality appraisal exercise in the UK (Bastow et al., 2014) required universities to demonstrate research impact through the retrospective case study and a proportion of central government funding has followed impact. Further afield, we see a similar, or arguably, stronger endorsement of the requirement for academics to demonstrate the societal and economic benefits of their research. Europe’s Horizon 2020, the largest European research and innovation programme aims to take great ideas from the ‘lab to the market’ and positions research very clearly as a vehicle for securing Europe’s global competitiveness. In many respects, we might argue that academics should bring interdisciplinary expertise to pressing social issues. Moreover, and as John Brewer (2013) reminds his readers, although an impact agenda is now more explicitly endorsed by a range of funding bodies, the social scientist’s aspiration to make a broader contribution to society is age-old. Brewer writes:

Public value is integral to the very nature of the social sciences since they emerged as separate disciplines out of moral philosophy in the eighteenth century precisely in order to better diagnose and improve the social condition.(2013: 6)

However, the risk to social science from calls for greater research impact, stem not so much from demands to increase public engagement or to ensure better practical translation of findings rather risks are to do with the consequences of a greater politicisation of research priorities. As public funding is squeezed, critics argue that the independence of research councils or other funding bodies may be compromised – Councils may fall in line with government objectives to fend off funding cuts. Here, it is useful to remind readers of what is known in the UK as the ‘AHRC/Haldene dust up’. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is a major funder of academic research in the UK. Controversy arose in 2010, when the AHRC’s delivery plan (AHRC, 2010) appeared to align planned research streams (connected communities) to David Cameron’s notion of ‘Big Society’. The delivery plan sparked huge animosity from academics who accused leaders within the Council of an unhealthy collusion with government in an attempt to avoid government cuts to the Council’s funding. Big Society was heralded by David Cameron (then leader of the Coalition Government), as one way of both fixing ‘broken Britain’ but also delivering unprecedented cuts in public spending. Cameron’s suggestion was that communities based on mutuality and volunteering (Big Society) would fill the space of funded services, which would disappear as government sought to re-balance public spending and deal with national debt. In this context, it is of little surprise that the AHRC’s delivery plan was met with such huge resistance. Some 40 plus members of the Council’s virtual college threatened to resign, if explicit references to David Cameron’s Big Society slogan were not removed from the delivery plan. Whether we do/do not believe that the AHRC was facing funding cuts if the Council did not come in line with a Government agenda, what academics objected to was a fundamental challenge to the Haldene principle. According to the Haldene principle, general research should be under the control of autonomous research councils, free from undue political and administrative pressures that might exert unhelpful influence on research priorities. In making explicit reference to Big Society, critics argued that the AHRC was manifestly eroding this principle. The Royal Historical Society spoke out strongly against a perceived move to assert government control over research in favour of what was seen as a passing political party fad. However, reference to Big Society remains in the AHRC’s delivery plan today. Regarding the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Department’s own document outlining research allocation for 2011–2015 stated that there would be ‘strong incentives and rewards for universities to improve their relationship with business, charities and government and to deliver even more impact on the economy and society’ (BIS, 2010: 3). It is noteworthy that in the same document, BIS also re-stated government commitment to the Haldene principle:

The decisions leading to the allocation of science and research funding as set out in this document have been made in accordance with the Haldene principle and the Government statement. (BIS, 2010: 13)

As austerity has continued to cause great anxiety about the future of funding for the social sciences, it appears that some of the ferocity of debate, witnessed around the time of the AHRC/Haldene dust up has given way to something of a different approach on the part of the academy. It is interesting to read the latest report from the Campaign for Social Science. This independent campaigning body was established to promote the social sciences within government and 81 universities, charities and publishers are now signed up to support its aims. The latest and most significant report from the organization has the title: The business of people: The significance of social science over the next decade. The content of the report illustrates a very clear alignment between the aims of social science and the pressing challenges facing the UK:

The challenges facing the UK – its prosperity and functioning as a place for trade, creativity, exchange, equity, and opportunity – will be met only if we deploy social science knowledge, skills and methods of inquiry ever more intensively. To thrive we must innovate. In innovation, we must marry progress in technology and the physical and life sciences with insights from studying behaviour, place, economy and society. (Campaign for Social Science, 2015, Summary and Recommendations)

Some of the statements made in this report are clearly an attempt to speak to government priorities and we might conclude that some 10 years ago, social scientists might have been less explicit about their interest in economic imperatives.

We join with colleagues from other disciplines in calling for more public investment in research. The advance of knowledge is a precondition for prosperity (and the tax revenues it supplies). (Campaign for Social Science, 2015, Summary and Recommendations)

While I have tended to focus discussion on the UK – trends are not particular to the UK. In Australia, a group of Universities self-identifying as: ‘The Innovative Research Universities’ has also been vocal in calling for greater alignment of social science research priorities with government and the economy. Referring to Australia’s national research appraisal process known as the ERA (excellence in research) which is focused on traditional research outputs, the group is cited as calling for this focus to be balanced by a parallel exercise which is centred on an assessment of the real impact of a university’s research (Hare, 2015).

A move, that perhaps started more than a decade ago, now appears to have clearly set in train closer alignment of social science research goals with the needs of civil society, the economy and government. So, how do we ensure that academic autonomy is not eroded given this direction of travel? Will the concerns of early critics be confirmed – a narrow instrumental approach to social science will dominate at the expense of more experimental, ‘frontier’ or blue skies activity? Here the influential work of John Brewer (2013) is helpful in charting a reasoned argument between the excesses of critique and the excesses of a neoliberal agenda for Higher Education. Former President of the British Sociological Society, Brewer’s much heralded text: The public value of social science: An interpretive essay is an illuminating read. Brewer takes issue with both mainstream government definition(s) of research impact, but is equally critical of those who resist in unreasoned ways. Brewer is unapologetic in his criticism of social scientists who write only for like-minded peers and whose work is largely ‘impenetrable’ to policy makers and a broader public (2013: 9). He describes such work as hiding behind a guise of freedom, when in fact it is ‘disconnected and disengaged’ (2013: 9). Brewer claims that the crisis which he sees besetting social science through insecurities about funding and mutual suspicion between government and the academy needs to be turned around through constructive engagement. In criticizing mainstream definitions of impact, Brewer states that we should think instead of the public value of social science. His book outlines a new public social science and is worth a close read as it offers one of a number of thought provoking analyses of social science futures. In many respects for social work colleagues, the sentiments that Brewer expresses readily fit with social work values. He sees value as comprising both the practical use value of social science applications, but also the inculcation of ‘moral sentiments’ and ‘a sympathetic imagination’ (p. 158). Social science teaching is described as having ‘civilizing, humanizing and cultural effects’ (p. 158). It is impossible to do justice to this work, but I will certainly be encouraging our new European Book Review Editor to seek an essay on Brewer’s interpretive essay.

So, returning to the anecdote with which I opened this piece, as stated above, the new pilot is a ready example of linear translation of research findings into real-world solutions that can be further tested for their effectiveness. However, following Brewer (2013), we can also understand that the value of this work, together with related streams of research activity, is to raise questions about how we might humanize public law proceedings. The contribution of social science to the family justice system in this example is to shift thinking beyond the individual case towards a greater appreciation of the effects of family court decisions and to consider how harm resulting from those decisions might be reduced.