What is research impact?
What research impact means at Waipapa Taumata Rau, and its value beyond academia.
Research impact is central to how we connect knowledge with change. This page explains what research impact is, how it’s defined, and why it’s essential to plan for it from the beginning of your research journey.
Research impact is about making a difference
Think of research impact as your work making a meaningful difference in people’s lives – supporting communities, addressing pressing issues, tackling complex challenges, and driving real-world change that matters.
It includes everything from improving public policy and advancing health outcomes to revitalising culture, shaping economic practices, or enhancing environmental resilience. Impact can arise from fundamental research, applied research, and creative practice across all disciplines.
The real-world part is key
Traditionally, research has been assessed through academic or scholarly impact, such as citations, publications, and intellectual contribution. While these remain important, research impact is ultimately about the change research enables beyond academia.
It is measured by indicators of change outside universities and research institutions, in society, the environment, and the economy. These changes may take years to unfold, and their effects can shape generations to come. When talking about research impact, what matters is the connection between your work and the difference it makes in the world.
Definitions of research impact
At Waipapa Taumata Rau, research impact is defined as:
"The contribution of research and creative practice to positive change in society, culture, the environment, or the economy, usually arising through productive, respectful, and sustained dialogue between researchers and the wider world."
This definition embraces the diverse ways in which knowledge and outputs generated by research can result in real-world benefits for individuals, whānau, communities, organisations, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the world, while acknowledging that such contributions often depend on productive and sustained dialogue between researchers, academia, and society.
Understanding impact more broadly can help you align your work with funders, partners, communities, and policy frameworks. Two commonly used national definitions you may come across include:
- The Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE): A change to the economy, society or environment, beyond contribution to knowledge and skills in research organisations.
- The Health Research Council (HRC): The direct and indirect influence of excellent and innovative research on individuals, communities, or society, including improvements to health and other social, economic, cultural or environmental benefits for New Zealand.
Why planning for impact matters
Waipapa Taumata Rau is committed to achieving impact from our research as outlined in the University's Research Impact Plan and Taumata Teitei Vision 2030 and Strategic Plan 2025.
This commitment means planning for impact from the outset – identifying who might benefit from your research, how to engage them along the way, and how to track the changes your work contributes to.
Embedding impact thinking from the start helps ensure your research is positioned to make the difference you intend. It also supports the University’s mission to generate knowledge that serves people, communities, and the planet. By keeping potential impact at the centre of your planning, you’re more likely to engage the communities and partners essential for making that impact possible.
Recognising the many forms impact can take can also help you shape research that not only advances knowledge but creates real-world change.
Glossary
Academic/scholarly impact
The contribution research makes within academia, including advancing disciplinary knowledge, informing future research, improving methods, and contributing to scholarly debate. Academic/scholarly impact is distinct from wider societal impact, but may help to enable it.
Co-creation
An overarching, collaborative process in which researchers and partners work together as equal contributors to define problems, shape questions, and develop, implement, and refine research, solutions or innovations. It spans all stages from ideation through to execution and use, emphasising shared ownership, rigour and relevance to real-world contexts and needs.
Co-design
A stage within co-creation that focuses on collaboratively shaping ideas, research questions, concepts, and plans. Through participatory and creative processes, researchers and partners draw on diverse expertise, lived experience, and user needs to design research activities, tools, interventions, services, or outputs. Co-design is not limited to early ideation and should continue iteratively across development, implementation, evaluation and revision.
Co-innovation
A process of jointly developing novel ideas or technologies, often within organisational or commercial settings. While similar to co-creation, co-innovation tends to focus more narrowly on technological or product-driven outcomes.
Co-production
The implementation stage of co-creation, where researchers and partners work together to deliver, test, and refine co-designed solutions or research in practice. It involves shared decision-making, action, and adaptation based on real-world feedback and experience.
Engagement
An active, two-way, relational process through which researchers interact with individuals or groups beyond the immediate research team to share knowledge, perspectives, experiences, or resources through dialogue. Engagement is grounded in mutual benefit, listening, reciprocity, and respect, and is strongest when those who may be affected by the research are actively involved throughout.
Evidence (for evidencing impact and outcomes)
Information used to demonstrate or support claims of outcomes or impacts. Evidence may include data, documents, testimonies, narratives or metrics, and varies by context and audience.
Indicators
Signs or measures used to track progress toward, or demonstrate the achievement of, intended outcomes or impacts. Indicators can be qualitative or quantitative and help determine whether change is occurring or has occurred.
Knowledge exchange
The two-way sharing of knowledge between researchers and partners, including communities, industry, government, and iwi/Māori organisations. It emphasises dialogue, relationship building, and mutual learning, which may or may not lead to immediate application.
Knowledge mobilisation
The active and iterative process of making knowledge accessible, shared, and usable in practice. It involves moving knowledge into the hands of those who can apply it, as well as co-creating new knowledge to support action, decision-making, and innovation.
Knowledge transfer
The primarily one-way movement of knowledge or research outputs from academia into the hands of people or organisations that can use them in practice. Often used in applied research contexts (e.g. health, engineering).
Outputs, outcomes, impacts
Outputs are the products of research and related activities that may be used by others to inform or enable change. Outcomes are the changes in behaviours, actions, practices, decisions, or capacities that occur when individuals, groups, or organisations engage with or utilise research outputs. They describe what people or organisations do differently as a result of research. Impacts are the resulting benefits to society, the environment, culture, health, policy, or the economy.
Learn more about how these terms are used in The results-chain framework.
Partners/stakeholders
Partners is a preferred alternative to “stakeholders.” Partners are the people, communities, or organisations with an interest in, influence on, or responsibility related to the research and/or its results. This may include those who benefit from, are affected by, contribute to, or use the research, such as iwi, industry, government agencies, NGOs, professional bodies and other researchers.
Pathways to impact
The interconnected processes, relationships, activities, mechanisms, and conditions through which research may contribute to outcomes and impacts over time. Pathways to impact recognise that change is often non-linear and context-dependent, shaped by how research is shared, interpreted, and used through ongoing interaction and dialogue between researchers and partners within broader social, cultural, political and institutional environments.
Potential impact
The anticipated future benefits or transformations a research project could generate if its outputs are used or applied. Potential impact is grounded in planning, engagement, and enabling conditions, not promises of guaranteed outcomes.
Reach and significance
Funding applications will often want you to articulate the reach and significance of your research impact. Reach refers to the extent or spread of the impact, both in terms of who or what was affected and how widely the benefits were felt, for example, across communities, sectors, organisations, or regions. Significance refers to the difference the impact made, i.e. the depth, intensity, or meaningful change that resulted from the research being used or applied. High significance does not require wide reach, and wide reach does not always imply high significance.
Research impact
Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland defines research impact as “the contribution of research and creative practice to positive change in society, culture, the environment, or the economy, usually arising through productive, respectful, and sustained dialogue between researchers and the wider world”.
Impact can be:
- Planned or emergent
- Long-term or short-term
- Direct or indirect
- Achieved through relationships, dialogue, and collaborative processes
Academic or scholarly impact may contribute to research impact by informing future research, methods, or debate that is later taken up beyond academia.