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Tomas Hellström. Photo.

Tomas Hellström

Professor

Tomas Hellström. Photo.

Achieving impact : impact evaluations and narrative simplification

Author

  • Tomas Hellström
  • Christina Hellström

Summary, in English

This study is concerned with how impact from research and innovation (R&I) programmes is accounted for in impact evaluation reports. Establishing causal links between a research funding instrument and different effects, poses well known methodological difficulties. In the light of such challenges, textual accounts about causal links ought to be carefully written. Nevertheless, impact evaluation reports have a tendency towards unwarranted simplification as far as impact inferences are concerned. In this study, we illustrate how such simplifications–versions of the narrative device ellipsis–are accomplished. Using examples from three Swedish impact evaluation reports, we focus on the constituent components of longer impact accounts, that of the impact argument, to analyze the various ways that impact is narratively achieved through simplification. We believe this analysis can contribute to the methodology of impact evaluation, as well as spread light on some the difficulties in the historiography of innovation in general.

Department/s

  • Department of Business Administration

Publishing year

2017

Language

English

Pages

215-230

Publication/Series

Prometheus

Volume

35

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Topic

  • Information Studies

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0810-9028