Evaluation of science and innovation policies

Course overview

A photo of the Hive and the library in the Alliance Manchester Business School.

Next date: 19-23 May 2025
Delivered by: Senior staff and invited external experts
Teaching: Lectures, interactive group exercises, case studies, mini-projects
Group size: Approximately 20
Location: Alliance Manchester Business School
View our 2025 course brochure.
Registration is now open for 2025. Please send enquiries to Debbie.Cox@manchester.ac.uk

The demand for evaluation in science and innovation policy continues to grow alongside the demands on STI policy to deliver a broad range of economic and societal goals against financial constraints. Thus, evaluations are increasingly understood as an essential learning tool.

They help to make policy makers and implementers improve the way they design and operate policies and make them better understand their specific contexts. In addition, governments and taxpayers require credible and robust justification that the economic and societal policy objectives are being achieved in an efficient, effective and economic manner.

This long-running course addresses the latest thinking in evaluation and teaches the most effective use of evaluation tools. As a leading European centre in the study of science, technology and innovation policy and evaluation methodologies, and based on forty years of evaluation practice, we are able to call upon a wealth of expertise, both from staff who have practical experience of the conduct of evaluations, and from policy makers and practitioners.

Who is it for?

Policymakers, analysts, programme sponsors and managers
Practitioners in research and research funding organisations
Professional evaluators and innovation researchers

Key topics

Theory and concepts of evaluation designs and frameworks
Basic evaluation tools and approaches
Indicators, bibliometrics and altmetrics
Evaluation of Organisations
Identifying and Measuring Societal Impacts
Evaluating Economic Impacts
Evaluation of Systems
Evaluation of research organisations
Peer review
Evaluation moving forward: challenge-driven, demand-driven and transition-driven policies and evaluation of networks

Outcomes

At the end of the course, participants will:

Understand the key motivations for evaluation and the distinctive features of the evaluation of science, technology and innovation policies, programmes, institutions and systems.
Be aware of the main academic literature addressing science and technology evaluation and key examples of evaluations in practice,
Understand how evaluation has evolved in relation to changing policies for science, technology and innovation,
Have gained practical insight into the main tools and methods for the design and conduct of evaluations, and therefore
Be able to commission, interpret and use evaluations across the spectrum of STI policies
Be able to design and apply evaluation concepts in the context of a practical situation.

Kate Barker

Effie Amanatidou

Erik Arnold

Professor Jakob Edler

Professor Maria Nedeva

Professor Raquel Ortega-Argilés

Dr John Rigby

Mike Thelwall