Formative evaluation of transdisciplinary research for systematic impact orientation in real-world laboratories

Scientific literature offers a variety of endeavors to conceptualize and assess societal effects of research. However, it lacks approaches on how to foster impact orientation and evaluate the effectiveness of transdisciplinary research and real -world laboratories. In this report, we present a framework for designing and conducting project -accompanying formative evaluation for impact -oriented monitoring of research processes, and for systematically recording their effects. We illustrate the application of our evaluation design with examples from two different real -world laboratories that we have been monitoring as evaluators for two years. We discuss the challenges in categorizing outputs and effects and in clarifying their significance for project success. We also address the limitations of our approach with respect to data quality and feasibility of data collection. Formative evaluation is a challenging task for all project participants. It requires adequate resources that must be considered during project planning.