SIAMPI

What is SIAMPI?

SIAMPI, Social Impact Assessment Methods through Productive Interactions, is both an analytical tool and a method for determining social impact.

When analysing social impact, SIAMPI focuses on the concept of productive interactions. An interaction is a contact between a researcher and a stakeholder. SIAMPI distinguishes three types of interactions: 1) direct or personal interactions, 2) indirect interactions through a specific medium, and 3) a financial or material ‘exchange’. These interactions become ‘productive’ when they induce stakeholders to make efforts to apply research results for social purposes, i.e. when it triggers a change in behaviour, as, for example, enshrined in protocols in healthcare. SIAMPI thus prioritises dynamic interactions and collaborative efforts. The premise, therefore, is that you should not so much focus on the impact of research as the processes that serve as proxies for impact. Social impacts of research result from complex processes of exchange – of teaching and learning – between stakeholders. These effects are more traceable than when trying to link research to a major social change. The transition from interactions to impact is characterised as ‘gradual’.

To determine social impact, SIAMPI focuses on productive interactions and stakeholders. This is done through interviews, by collecting quantitative data, through focus groups and through document analysis. The analysis establishes a relationship between the type of productive interactions, social impact, stakeholders and the assessment tool (see the table below).

How do you use SIAMPI?
The SIAMPI model is suitable for studying projects where research is usually only one component in complex social and political processes and where it is difficult to identify the direct impact of research. Studies of productive interactions have found that such projects are often informal, decentralised and have unique dynamics in contacts with social actors.

Three tools have been developed to evaluate research using the concept of productive interactions: an interview protocol, an audit reporting protocol and a bibliometric tool. The latter relates to the ‘contextual response analysis’ (CRA) tool that monitors internet usage of publications and other online research materials. This tool will be discussed separately and will therefore not be detailed further here. The main goals of the interview protocol are:

• Identifying the types of interactions between researchers and potential users and beneficiaries elsewhere in society.
• Tracking the efforts invested by these stakeholders to apply research findings to social goals (that is, identifying productive interactions).
• Identifying and, if possible, measuring the social impacts of these efforts (that is, identifying the results of productive interactions).
• To identify cases where the stakeholder may have played a role in defining research questions or the analytical methodologies used by researchers (feedback to the research process).

These questions are aimed at researchers/stakeholders, research groups and/or organisations, where – to do justice to the interactions – the interview protocol consists of a section for the researcher and a section for the ‘beneficiary’. (See downloads for the interview protocol).

The reporting protocol consists of three steps for the self-evaluation report and one step for the evaluation committee. We describe these steps as follows (see downloads for the detailed reporting protocol):

1. Description of the research group’s mission and objectives in terms of achieving social impact. The mission reflects the context of the research. It is also a good idea to specify the social domains and professional practices targeted by the research.
2. Description of the social contribution achieved during the period assessed. Looking back over the reporting period, it is possible to describe the effective social contribution of the research.
3. Compile a list based on social relevance indicators. Any specific results presented in Step 2 can be aggregated by using indicators that are more generally applicable in the relevant field. The indicators reflect different aspects of social relevance such as the reach of the research findings, the degree of interest and application of the research findings by stakeholders as well as uptake of the research findings.
4. (For the evaluation committee) The evaluation committee assesses the social relevance of the research based on the evidence presented in Steps 2 and 3. The committee can incorporate stakeholder opinions by, for example, inviting experts with an understanding of the social issue or sector, organising a round table discussion between stakeholders and the committee as part of the review process, or an additional stakeholder survey.

What is the origin of SIAMPI?
SIAMPI was a European project in the FP7 Social Impact Assessment Methods programme, completed in February 2011. Participants in the project included researchers from the Netherlands, France, England and Spain. Dutch researchers involved included Jack Spaapen and Leonie van Drooge, both still active in the field of research evaluation. The concept of productive interactions has also been used by, for example, the pan-European League of Research Universities (LERU) and is also part of the impact framework used by NWO, the Dutch Research Council.