BETTER Life Framework For SER
The Framework for Socially Engaged Research (SER), developed by the BETTER Life consortium, provides a multi-stakeholder perspective to support institutions, researchers, and stakeholders in advancing SER. It highlights key dimensions such as institutional conditions, stakeholder engagement, and the scientific, social, and economic impacts of SER. The framework enables institutions to assess their capacities, researchers to understand available support and engagement opportunities, and stakeholders to recognize the broader value generated through SER.
Dimensions and Elements of the Framework
The framework is organized into four dimensions that represent the core elements that compose SER in a research institution and the sub-elements in which those could be operationalized.
Institutional Environment
This dimension focuses on the existing institutional capacities to support and foster SER. This dimension shows the availability of resources and the experiences that the organisations have accumulated in working with external stakeholders. This dimension is useful for the organisations to evaluate their capacity and for researchers to overview the elements they can use from the institution.
The subdimensions are:
- Support structures: This subdimension refers to the availability of organizational structures, such as funding, policy frameworks, tools, and administrative support, that enable and foster SER.
- Research capacities: This subdimension emphasizes the need for researchers to have the necessary skills and expertise to engage in SER, including opportunities for participating in institutional and personal capacity building.
- Context knowledge: This subdimension emphasizes the systematisation of previous experience, the existing impacts, the knowledge of the regional challenges and the factors that shape and determine the research interventions.
Stakeholders Engagement
This dimension focuses on the involvement and participation of stakeholders (academia, industry/businesses, government, and civil society organizations) in the SER process.
The subdimensions are:
- Involvement of citizens: This subdimension refers to the active engagement of citizens and communities in the SER processes, including the co-creation of research questions and methods, collection of data, and sharing of knowledge and expertise.
- Networking and Collaboration: This subdimension emphasises the importance of building and maintaining mature networks and collaborations among stakeholders, including researchers, community groups, policymakers, and other stakeholders. These networks might be allocated at the institutional, faculty, or departmental level.
- Shared power: This subdimension emphasises the need for power-sharing among stakeholders, including equitable distribution of resources, decision-making, and recognition of diverse perspectives and contributions.
Adequacy
This dimension focuses on the quality and relevance measures to ensure that SER is meeting the need of the specific ecosystem.
The subdimensions are:
- Contextual relevance: This subdimension focuses on the importance of the research being relevant and meaningful to the stakeholders involved, addressing the specific issues and challenges faced by the community or society.
- Scientific relevance: This subdimension refers to the relevance of SER being scientifically rigorous, with appropriate research methods and data analysis techniques.
- Quality assurance measures: This subdimension emphasises the need for quality assurance measures throughout the research process, including ethical considerations, data management, and stakeholder feedback.
Impacts
This dimension focuses on the outcomes and impact of SER in terms of research and instrumental outcomes, as well as ecosystem impacts.
The subdimensions are:
- Instrumental benefits: This subdimension refers to the tangible outputs and benefits that SER creates, such as improved health, education, or economic outcomes.
- Conceptual outcomes: This subdimension refers to the new insights, datasets, conceptual frameworks, etc., that the SER generates, contributing to the development of new theories, ideas, and knowledge.
- Enhanced ecosystem capacities: This subdimension refers to the capacity-building and strengthening of social, economic, and environmental systems and processes, including community development, policymaking, innovation and trust.
The logic of the framework is organized by levels, with SER as the core concept, operationalized into dimensions, and into subdimensions. This last level allows for setting indicators and/or standards as a further development to be implemented in the next work package of the project.
Benefits to Foster Through the Framework
The implementation of the framework for socially engaged research in the BETTER Life DCoE aims at fostering diverse benefits for researchers, HEIs, and society. These groups of beneficiaries of SER were considered in the design of the framework and are reflected in the dimensions of the framework that allow to clearly see the components related to the institution (dimension 1), the external stakeholders (dimension 2), the researchers and their projects (dimension 3), and the impacts generated through SER in the academic and social spheres of the ecosystems. The specific benefits that the framework aims to foster care:
For Researchers
— Enhancing their skills and expertise in community engagement, collaboration, and communication.
— Providing an opportunity to address the specific issues and challenges faced by the community or society.
— Offering a chance to participate in meaningful research that can have a significant impact on society.
— Facilitating networking and collaboration with other stakeholders, including community groups, policymakers, and other researchers.
For HEIs
— Helping to establish a global centre in SER with an application in life sciences.
— Aligning with the foundations of excellence and emphasising the importance of building strong organizational capacities, enabling conditions, and measuring impacts.
— Providing a comprehensive approach to establishing SER for academic centres of excellence.
— Enabling the institution to contribute to social, cultural, economic, and political contexts in which research is taking place.
For Society
— Providing an opportunity to participate in research that addresses the specific issues and challenges faced by the community.
— Bringing tangible benefits to society, such as improved health, education, or economic outcomes.
— Facilitating the sharing of knowledge and expertise between researchers and communities.
— Helping to build and maintain networks and collaborations among stakeholders, including researchers, community groups, policymakers, and other stakeholders.
— Facilitating power-sharing among stakeholders, including distribution of resources, decision-making, and/or recognition of diverse perspectives and contributions.
About SER
Socially Engaged Research (SER) has increasingly garnered attention as a means to promote a knowledge-driven society and address societal needs in diverse fields of study, and the life sciences field is no exception. While community-based research has been a primary focus of engagement with communities and civil society organizations, SER extends beyond that to include a range of practices, approaches, and methodologies that uses collaborative engagement with diverse societal stakeholders (academia, industry and businesses, government, and civil society).
