Measuring societal impact

The Challenge

Since it was founded, this leading university has prided itself on helping to shape the local area and its people, through supporting social mobility, driving economic growth / innovation and supporting the cultural strength of the local community, through various initiatives and activities.

The university wanted to understand if and how they were making a difference in their local community. Also, to measure residents’ awareness and familiarity, as well as understand their key issues and priorities for the local area and the role they can play to support these.

Our approach

We accessed Savanta’s high quality research panels to reach out to residents in the local areas

We ran an online survey initially to understand residents’ perceptions and test their awareness levels of the initiatives and activities undertaken by the university.

We then conducted qualitative focus groups to further understand how the university could make a difference and support their local communities.

The outcome

The research was able to provide some key insights around how they could better engage with their local communities and bring to life some of their important work and research.

Local residents are concerned about aspects such as health and social care, cost of living, crime and their local economy and it was found, they would welcome support from the university in these areas of priority.

Residents are proud to have the university in their local area and are keen to visit the campus and learn more about the university, as well as take part in community events to bring together both residents and students.