Enhancing impact evaluation: A case study on improving reporting practices in a domestic abuse service

This paper presents an overview of a project undertaken by Royal Holloway, University of London and DASH (Domestic Abuse Stops Here), a UK non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting victims and survivors of domestic abuse. The project was funded by a Social Science Impact Accelerator (SSIA) Award, a programme from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) that enables collaboration and knowledge exchange between research organisations and partners or communities to apply social sciences knowledge to societal challenges. The project sought to review and improve the service’s practices for recording and reporting the impact of its work and offer best practice recommendations for other domestic violence charities intending to improve their impact reporting. Through a combination of literature review, interviews with service staff, and focus groups with service users and external professionals, the project highlighted gaps and opportunities for enhancing effectiveness in impact measurement. This paper outlines the findings from the project and offers reflections on this mode of partnership to foster collaborations between academia and non-profit organisations.