Science and society: societal impacts of research under review

This project aims to shed light on the impact of impact assessments in science from a sociological point of view. The research design consists of three consecutive steps: Firstly, we will construct an analytical framework based on a systematic literature survey on the concept of societal impact. We will secondly analyze the corpus of nearly 7,000 impact case studies within the REF 2014, the most recent evaluation of research in the UK higher education institutions in which the impact element was introduced. By combining qualitative as well as quantitative methods our aim is to empirically specify the multiple dimensions of „research impact“. On this basis, we will finally try to locate potential governance effects in regards to the diversity of science.