Develop a communication strategy
Objectives: What do you hope to achieve by disseminating results? Why do you wish to communicate to particular audiences?
Audience: Who is the audience? How do they absorb evidence? What are their needs?
Content: Should be direct, simple and explain the problem the research addresses, the solution generated, the implications of the findings.
Channels/Tools: Needs to be practical and suit the intended audience. May need multiple tools to reach different audiences.
World Health Organization. (2014). Implementation research toolkit: Workbook. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/110523/9789241506960_Workbook_eng.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
This will include people and organisations who have
For example:
Stakeholder (name of organisation, group or individual) |
Who? | Why and when interact? (Short description of why and when, e.g. problem formulation, knowledge production or communication of results) |
Mode of interaction (What type of interaction could be relevant?) |
Contacts |
Private sector stakeholders: e.g. business associations, individual companies, farmers |
||||
Public sector stakeholders: e.g. parliament and ministries, agencies, municipalities, regions, EU, UN |
||||
Civil society stakeholders: e.g. non-governmental organisations, community based organisations, unions |
||||
Academic stakeholders and think tanks: e.g. other research groups or research organisations, knowledge brokers, boundary organisations |
Table from Slunge et al. 2017, Stakeholder interaction in research processes - a guide for researchers and research groups, p. 27 https://doi.org/10.13140/rg.2.2.28518.22080
To the public | To the government | To industry |
|
|
|
Here are a number of considerations you may want to take into account as part of your E&I communications strategy
These last considerations are comparatively small, but quite large when it comes to delivery.