Societal impact evaluation: implications for boundary spanning at the science-policy-society interface

Scientific impact on policy and society is often generated in nonlinear and complex ways, creating myriad challenges for social impact assessment. This study sets out to determine the types of social impact evaluation frameworks and approaches that can be used in monitoring and evaluation efforts in boundary spanning organizations working at the intersection of science, policy, and society. The objective was to find evaluation frameworks that could be mutually used in research impact evaluation and boundary spanning impact evaluation in boundary spanning organizations. This study uses the case study of the Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), a boundary spanning organization in global change research. I proposed the use of the theoretical framework of Productive Interactions to develop a survey of APN funded scientists. The intention was to provide a tool that contributes to societal impact evaluation using minimal resources. This tool is intended for use in conjunction with other types of methods such as focus group interviews of key stakeholders, which would be more targeted after analyzing the results of the survey.