Research capacity and general community impacts of five ACIAR-sponsored projects

Summary

This report is the third resulting from a program of assessments being undertaken of impacts of ACIAR projects that were completed some five years previously. The study examines impacts on research capacity (including access to new techniques) and on farmers, consumers and the environment. The focus on projects completed five years previously is to provide time for uptake of research results to commence and for community impacts to begin to emerge. The importance of allowing such a time interval was emphasised by an examination of external reviews of 111 ACIAR-sponsored projects completed between 1990 and 1997 (Mauldon 1998). That study found that although technical success could be assessed satisfactorily from external
reviews undertaken in the final stages of projects, it was generally too early to evaluate uptake and any impacts on the wider community at that time.
Dr R. Mauldon undertook the first two studies in the series, covering eight projects in total (Mauldon 1999a,b). For this third study, a further five projects have been selected from the remaining ten. As in the first two stages of the program, the assessments in this small study have been 'desktop' studies. Information was obtained from documentation held by ACIAR and from people with knowledge of project outcomes, particularly project leaders, in Australia and overseas. Telephone, email and fax were the main methods
used to gather information. No attempt has been made to assess the quality of the projects themselves: a task that ACIAR undertakes at the conclusion of each project through its external and internal reviews. Nor has any attempt been made in this small study to assess how effective the projects have been in achieving ACIAR's wider overall goals such as poverty reduction in collaborating countries. Such an assessment would require a deeper analysis than has been attempted here.