Evaluation Network for Transdisciplinary Research

Social ecological research is the title under which the concept of a funding programme of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is aiming to fund a specifically problem and actor orientated type of research which is transdisciplinary as well.

For the first time "Infrastructural Projects" as well as ordinary research projects are being funded within the framework of this funding programme. Those infrastructural projects are carried out in order to strengthen research capacities which in turn are the basis for interesting and innovative research projects. All this is to support the development of centres of competence and to promote social-ecological research within the Federal Republic of Germany.

In this context five institutes of the 'Ökoforum' cooperated in a project that is titled 'Evaluation Network for Transdisciplinary Research' (EVALUNET). A project group was established as responsible body: it consisted of one representative each from IÖW - Institue for Ecological Economy Research, ISOE - Institute for Social-Ecological Research, Katalyse - Institute for Applied Environmental Research, ÖÖI - Austrian Institue for Applied Ecology and two representatives of Öko-Institut - Institute for Applied Ecology as well as Matthias Bergmann who has been assigned by ISOE to be head of the project. Mr. Bergmann is based at the 'Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin' - Institute for Advanced Study.

The aim of the project was first of all to strengthen the individual institutes of 'Ökoforum' by developing quality and evaluation criteria for transdisciplinary research projects.

The strengthening of infrastructure within social-ecological research was to be achieved by working on the following two objectives within EVALUNET:

Internal training and defined quality standards within the institutes (establishment of innovations and methods, transdisciplinary learning processes, development of new cooperations)
Development of instruments for process-orientated (self -)evaluation for the institutes within Ökoforum

In order to achieve these objectives six transdisciplinary research projects were extensively analysed. First a documentation was compiled for each of the projects by the scientists responsible. This documentation, based on material from their project (reports etc.) as well as on answers on a questionnaire developed by the Evalunet group, gives details on the team working in the project, conditions given by external frameworks, project management, working procedures and results, integrating methods concerning the contents, the final products and how results are put into practice. The evaluations were based on this material each of them culminating in a three-day-workshop with specialised commentators and external experts contributing aspects of scientific research and scientific evaluation. Before and after those workshops the latest methods and developments of criteria have been put forward and discussed.

The results of the analyses of the six projects have been compiled in a catalogue of evaluation criteria. By analysing transdisciplinary research projects this catalogue to a certain extent was generated in a "bottom up" movement. Nonetheless, this result was object of a comprehensive feedback and validation procedure where about 80 experts from transdisciplinary research institutions, from science studies and funding organisations are asked to give their comments on this tentative research result.

The results are published in:

Bergmann, Matthias et al., 2005: Quality Criteria of Transdisciplinary Research. A Guide for the Formative Evaluation of Research Projects. ISOE-Studientexte, No 13 / English Version, Frankfurt am Main.

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Evaluation Network for Transdisciplinary Research

The results are published in: