How societal impact is understood and approached across a newly formed community of researchers with an ambitious ‘health of the public’ agenda

There is an increasing requirement for universities to demonstrate positive societal impacts of their research output. New approaches to research operationalization are being called for, including in relation to research for the public’s health, yet orienting research towards societal impact has profound practical implications for individual research projects as well as for academia. It is therefore important for us to understand how researchers and other engaged parties understand impact and how they plan and evaluate it. Hence, we undertook a series of interviews with members of research groups involved in impact planning and evaluation in each of the Consortia within a novel programme of funded research: the UK Prevention Research Partnership. Six main themes emerged from the analysis: defining impact; programme theory & pathways to impact; stakeholder analysis, engagement and co-production; measuring and reporting impact; challenges, structural barriers and lessons learned; funder influence. The results show that: there is a wide-ranging plurality of understandings when it comes to impact and how to achieve it; training appears needed in developing robust theories of change; there is a need for funders to be more explicit about what they expect from co-production; stakeholder analysis is important for not only understanding the problem space, but also for mapping pathways to impact; evaluating impact across complex systems is highly challenging and requires much greater attention. These findings should help researchers to optimize their strategies toward achieving societal impact, and support funders in being more explicit about what they expect regarding planning for and reporting on societal impact.