‘Hidden’ work and lost opportunities: nursing research and impact case studies submitted to REF2021

Aim(s):

(1) Identify and characterise the nursing contribution to impact case studies submitted to Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 across all Units of Assessment and compare this to those submitted to REF 2014; (2) Identify and characterise those impact case studies of relevance to nursing that did not include a nurse in the research team; (3) Compare the characteristics of impact case studies identified in Aim 2 with those that did include a nurse in the research team.

Design: Desk-based analysis of REF2021 published data.

Methods: We searched the REF2021 impact database with the term nurs* then sorted case studies into categories representing the involvement of nurses on the research team. We developed variables with which to examine the impact case studies (ICSs) and make comparisons.

Results: One-fifth of ICSs involving a nurse researcher do not contribute to a visible body of ‘nursing research’ and is ‘hidden’ in other disciplines; research teams persistently fail to involve nurse researchers when researching topics of clear relevance to nurses and nursing.

Conclusion: Our findings provide insight into two topics of importance for nursing research: reputation, and failure to benefit from transdisciplinarity.

Impact: Benefit to nurse researchers from involvement in transdisciplinary research is still limited; some nursing research remains hidden.