Importance of knowledge transfer alongside other goals in science
Knowledge transfer is becoming increasingly important in science. The Berlin University Alliance would also like to promote the exchange of knowledge with social actors in the Berlin research area. The third mission increases the requirement to examine the scientific knowledge produced for its social utility or even to bring about a social impact. Although societal usefulness does not have the same importance for all research areas per se, science policy requirements and discourses can certainly exert pressure on all scientists and result in such scientists prioritizing these new goals higher than would be useful for the actual research.
This relationship between personal scientific objectives, pressure of expectations and prioritization in scientific work was investigated using an instrument developed specifically for this purpose in the project. Respondents to the Berlin Science Survey were asked to assess the importance of "societal impact of research results", the perceived pressure of expectations in this regard and prioritization in their own research practice - in each case in relation to other goals in science.
Figure 1 shows the assessments of societal impact in relation to the other scientific objectives surveyed. The scientists do not see the social utility of scientific results as an overriding goal. The importance of this goal ranks slightly behind interdisciplinary cooperation and open science. At the same time, however, the pressure of expectations is somewhat higher here than for open science and interdisciplinary collaborations. Finally, the prioritization of societal impact in one's own scientific work is also not particularly high compared to the other tasks and goals. Here, knowledge exchange ranks roughly on a par with other science policy imperatives such as open science and interdisciplinarity.
It can be assumed that the assessments of societal impact depend heavily on research contexts and the type of knowledge produced in each case. In fact, there are some notable, albeit not overwhelming, differences (see Figure 2). In the engineering sciences and even more so in the social sciences, a somewhat higher appreciation of societal impact can be observed - especially in comparison to the humanities. These are the subject areas in which research is also more application-oriented. In contrast, the pressure of expectations hardly varies between the subject groups. In terms of prioritization, the humanities and social sciences are again far apart, with the social sciences prioritizing the social utility of research results the most and the humanities, together with the natural sciences, the least.
Figure 1 Goals, pressure of expectations and prioritization in one's own work
Figure 2 Goals, pressure of expectations and own prioritization of societal impact, by subject group
The assessments for societal impact show that more than half of the respondents classify "social usability of research results" as a "high goal" (40.8%) or even one of the "highest goals" (15.8%) within science (see Figure 3). At the same time, over 41% of respondents feel a "high" (30.7%) or even "very high" (10.4%) level of pressure to achieve added value for society through their own research. Finally, in their own scientific practice, 53.1% of respondents gave this goal "no priority" (16.1%) or "low priority" (37.0%) and 46.8% gave it "high priority" (35.3%) or even "top priority" (11.5%). The prioritization of various goals in one's own work is driven both by one's own goals and values as well as by the pressure of expectations. At the same time, it can be assumed that the pressure of expectations, as well as goal setting and prioritization, depend on specific role expectations. We therefore also look at the response distributions separately by status group.
Figure 3 Societal impact: goal, expectation pressure, prioritization
Figures 4 to 6 show the three assessments - importance of the goal, pressure of expectations and prioritization in one's own work - broken down by status group. It is striking that pre-docs assign greater importance to societal impact than higher status groups. Among predocs, 61.1% consider the societal impact of research to be a "high" or "highest" goal. Among professors, only 46.3% consider societal impact to be a "high" or even the "highest" goal in science (see Figure 4). This confirms a trend that we also see with other goals: younger or less established scientists are more inclined to identify with science policy goals than more established scientists, especially professors. The opposite is true for the pressure of expectations: While 37.3% of pre-docs state that they feel a high or even very high pressure of expectation to align their research with societal utility, as many as 53.2% of professors say the same (see Figure 5). When it comes to prioritizing societal impact in their own research, it can be seen that this is determined less by the pressure of expectations and more by their own goal formulation: Predocs (50.2%) are slightly more likely to give societal impact a "high" or even a "top priority" (see Figure 6), although they have the lowest pressure of expectations with regard to societal impact.
Figure 4 Societal impact: normative goal, by status group
Figure 5 Societal impact: Expectation pressure, by status group
Figure 6 Societal impact: prioritization, by status group
Figures 7 to 9 show the differences in normative objectives, pressure of expectations and personal prioritization of Societal Impact, differentiated by gender. Accordingly, the proportion of those who regard Societal Impact as a "high" or "highest goal" is significantly higher among women (65.1%) than among men (49.2%) (see Figure 7). At the same time, women tend to feel more pressure to meet expectations with regard to the topic and also prioritize it higher in their own research than men (see Figures 8 and 9). However, caution is initially required when interpreting the data, as gender is confounded with the subject structure to a not insignificant extent, and it is therefore unclear whether the effect is really a gender effect or can ultimately be attributed to the subject structure. For this purpose, multivariate models are calculated in the last section of this chapter in order to separate the effects (Figures 10 and 11).
Figure 7 Societal impact: normative goal, by gender group
Figure 8 Societal impact: Expectation pressure, by gender group
Figure 9 Societal impact: prioritization, by gender group
The bivariate results suggest that the perception of expectation pressure is primarily influenced by membership of a particular status group, while normative objectives in science are also influenced by membership of subject groups. Since the five subject groups contrasted here only roughly reflect the underlying research contexts, it is worth looking at further characteristics to differentiate between research contexts.
We have selected some characteristics that are considered relevant for the differentiation of research contexts based on qualitative science research (Gläser 2018, Laudel and Gläser 2014, Gläser et al. 2010). The characteristics included in the Berlin Science Survey are: theoretical/conceptual work, empirical work, work in working groups or teams, experimental/hypothesis-testing work, work follows a long-term research agenda, work is basic research, work is characterized by competition with other research groups working on the same topic, work is dependent on technical infrastructures.
We included these characteristics as independent variables in a multivariate model to describe different research contexts. Figures 10 and 11 show the results of two multivariate analyses that estimate the influence of various factors on perceived expectation pressure (Figure 10) and on the normative objective with regard to societal impact (Figure 11).
Figure 10 Factors influencing the perception of pressure to meet expectations with regard to societal impact
The analysis of the factors influencing the pressure of expectations confirms the previously identified bivariate findings (see Figure 10). With regard to the subjects, it can be seen that scientists in the life sciences, natural sciences and engineering feel less pressure of expectations compared to those in the social sciences. With regard to the characteristics examined for the identification of research contexts, it can only be seen that if one's own research is "characterized by competition with other research groups working on the same topic" or "follows a longterm research agenda", greater pressure of expectation is felt than if this is not the case. This could be an indication that competition is particularly high where application-oriented, socially useful research is concerned. Overall, the pressure of expectation is determined more via the subjects than via the specific research conditions. At the same time, membership of the status group is far more relevant. For example, postdocs and predocs feel significantly less pressure of expectations when it comes to societal impact compared to professors. In addition, women feel a stronger pressure of expectations than their male colleagues.
Figure 11 Factors influencing the normative goal of Societal Impact
Figure 11 confirms the bivariate correlations found with regard to gender, status groups and subject groups. It can be seen that societal impact is significantly more important for women. The bivariate findings from the status group comparison are also reflected in the multivariate model. For example, postdocs and predocs rate societal impact significantly more often as a "high" or "highest goal" compared to professors. Furthermore, even after controlling for the other factors, it is confirmed that the importance of societal impact is rated lowest in the humanities and highest in the social sciences. In addition to these subject effects, there is an additional effect related to the characteristic of basic research. Scientists who conduct basic research consider the goal of social utility of research results to be less important than other researchers whose own research subject has a greater application focus per se.