Guidelines to Identify and Analyse Existing Methods to Assess Social Innovation and Impacts. Deliverable 4.1, Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas (SIMRA).

Report to the European Commission, pp. 45. It provides the background, common methodological approach and criteria for identifying and selecting relevant frameworks, approaches, methods and tools for evaluating social innovation, its impacts, and analysis of relevant policy implications. Guiding concepts were identified in relevant literature for development of the guidelines, informing on: i) relevance of processes, i.e. how social relations are re-organized and managed to deliver outcomes on well-being; ii) well-being outcomes refer to the economy, society, the environment, governance and institutions, in different combinations; iii) well-being refers to both individual and collective needs, which can be the final aim of social innovation, representing impacts of social innovation. The report provides an overview of meanings of evaluation principles, standards, types of evaluation, criteria, and indicators, all based upon the most commonly used evaluation approaches and terms. Descriptions and interpretations of the terms highlight conceptual connections to the evaluation of the European Rural Development Programme. Finally, the report provides the criteria and instructions to identify and select existing evaluation frameworks, approaches, methods and tools, and the template for extracting and categorizing information considered relevant for co-constructing the final set of methods. A template was designed for use in Excel for capturing and reporting on existing frameworks, approaches, methods and tools in relation to social innovation impacts on four specific domains (economic, social, environmental and institutional/governance) and policy implications. A separate worksheet is dedicated to each Section, as follows: Section 1 - general characteristics of the selected framework/approach/method/tool; Section 2 - specific relationship to social innovation; Section 3 - evaluation characteristics of the framework/ approach/method/tool; Section 4 - capturing information about features of the tools.