Public Involvement Impact Assessment Framework
(PiiAF)

image representing Phase 4 Phase 4: Formulating assessment questions and designing the assessment

By now you and your team, including public members, should be clear about the methods you will use for public involvement, the impacts you want and you should have decided:

  • Who will contribute to the development of your assessment plan
  • What role the members of the public involved in your research will have;
  • Whether you will undertake a formative or summative assessment or a combination;
  • Who will undertake the assessment: the research team or an independent person

You should also have:

  • Described how your approaches to involvement will lead to your desired impacts
  • Highlighted the contextual factors (positive or negative) that may affect them.

In this final phase you need to formulate your questions and design the assessment. The key questions to consider here are set out below. Click on the link to access more information and resources to help you answer these questions:

  • What specific questions do you want your assessment to answer? [See page 51 of the downloadable Guidance Document]
  • What challenges will you need to address and which might limit what is feasible? [See page 52 of the downloadable Guidance Document]
  • What approach to impact assessment will you use? [See page 53 of the downloadable Guidance Document]
  • What specific data will you need to collect and how will you do this? [See page 54 of the downloadable Guidance Document]

Once you have worked through these questions there is still work to do before your impact assessment plan is finished, including deciding on your approach to data analysis. This depends on the type of data you collect but you may find it helpful to use our searchable database to find study designs and methods similar to those you wish to use.
We have also included a worked example of the development of an assessment plan for a participative action research project involving young people.