ABSTRACT
The importance of dissemination is that it has impact in that real changes happen in the lives of the researched because of the research. 'Impact' looms large in the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the government mechanism for working out who gets governmental research funding in British universities. The REF is an interesting process in that it is supposedly one of peer assessment. Chen et al. note that dissemination beyond an academic audience to community members and the general public is variable, and that myriad challenges to effective dissemination remain. B. Cook et al. conducted a review of the impact case studies and dissemination of participatory research and found participatory research to be marginalized. Cook et al. in the review of how participatory project were reported and monitored in impact case studies noticed that the prevailing paradigm for reporting impactcreated a wariness of documenting less tangible impacts.
