Examining the impact of health research facilitated by small peer-reviewed research operating grants in a women's and children's health centre

An online questionnaire was sent to 64 Principal Investigators and Co-Investigators from Research Operating Grants awarded from 2004 to 2006. The questionnaire was designed to assess five areas of potential impact: (1) research, (2) policy, (3) practice, (4) society and (5) personal. Research impact reported by participants included publications (72%), presentations (82%) and knowledge transfer beyond the traditional formats (51%). Practice impact was reported by 67% of participants, policy impact by 15% and societal impact by 18%. All participants reported personal impact.Small research grants yield similar impacts to relatively large research grants. Regardless of the total amount of research funds awarded, rigorously peer-reviewed research projects have the potential for significant impact at the level of knowledge transfer and changes in clinical practice and policy. Additional findings in the present research indicate that small awards have the potential to have significant impact on the individual grant holder across a variety of capacity building variables. These personal impacts are particularly noteworthy in the context of developing the research programs of novice researchers.Although health research focuses on the development of evidence, there has been surprisingly little effort to evaluate the effects of research and research funding programs. Some research program evaluations of agencies such as the NIH[1] and the Health and Health Research Council of New Zealand[2] have relied on bibliometric methods to review their granting programs. These reviews typically consist of recording publications per funded project and using this information to compare the number of papers published among comparable institutes or grants[1,2]. Although useful, these evaluations are limited in scope, and do not address the multidimensional aspects of research impact[3].Research frameworks have been developed by several groups[3,4] and institutions[5] as a means for evaluatin