Conducting responsible research and innovation involves being reflective, responsive and adaptive to change. Monitoring and evaluation is important for assessing whether you have achieved your intended outcomes, for highlighting areas for improvement and for identifying issues that need to be addressed during the process.
In RRI, reflection and evaluation is ideally performed as an iterative process throughout the research process, in dialogue with relevant stakeholders, in which changes are made in response to new knowledge and perspectives.
Evaluation can take many forms. Some science shops evaluate specific activities, such as workshops, events or training, which they undertake through the use of participant questionnaires. The research process itself can also be evaluated, for example the quality of the collaboration between the science shop and CSOs and the satisfaction of the CSOs with the research outputs. Insights and lessons gained from questionnaires and feedback with participants can be used to improve and further develop programmes. Science shops can also conduct post-project evaluation after delivery of project outputs in order to assess longer-term impact of the outcomes.
A further aspect of monitoring and evaluation relates to a science shop’s own RRI practices.
RRI TOOLS
… to evaluate a science shop project |
| The Evaluating a science shop project toolkit by the PERARES project (2012) is designed to help in assessing the performance of projects focused on research for social purposes and improving their quality and to help in assessing the influences of such projects on the development of scientific knowledge. It contains checklist and survey forms to evaluate four stages of project process. |
| A cost-benefit analysis and evaluation of science shops produced as part of the PERARES project in 2011 describes how the economic evaluation of science shops can be assessed with the help of a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). |
… to evaluate a public engagement activity |
| Evaluation: practical guidelines. A guide for evaluating public engagement activities for research performing organisations and researchers seeking to engage general audiences with their subject to evaluate public engagement activities, regardless of prior experience of either public engagement or evaluation and regardless of discipline. Contains guidance on how to build an evaluation strategy, data collection, data analysis and drafting reports. Produced by the UK National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE), Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), and Research Councils UK. |
… to evaluate a citizen science project |
| User’s guide for evaluating learning outcomes from citizen science is designed for use by citizen science practitioners who want to evaluate project outcomes with techniques, tips and best practices for conducting evaluations and well as templates to help with evaluation planning and implementation. Produced by Citizen Science Central and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. |
… to assess how RRI are my own practices |
| The RRI Tools self-reflection tool is designed to help organisations and individuals reflect on RRI principles that can improve their research and innovation practices. It will guide your reflection by providing questions organised according to the RRI Policy Agendas: Ethics, Gender Equality, Governance, Open Access, Public Engagement and Science Education and will help you consider all relevant stakeholder groups. |
| Indicators for promoting and monitoring responsible research and evaluation is a 2015 report from the EC’s Expert Group on Policy Indicators for RRI describing a set of indicators that can be tailored to your needs based on the RRI areas (Governance, Public engagement, Gender equality, Science education, Open access/open science, Ethics, Sustainability, Social justice/inclusion). |