Social Care Research Impact
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Stakeholder Mapping

A stakeholder map is a visual or physical representation of the various groups and individuals involved with your research. The creation of a stakeholder map ensures that you have an awareness (and record) of potential influencers, collaborators, partners and other players to consider throughout your research and impact activity.

  • Draw up a list of all stakeholders, consider internal and external parties, not forgetting to focus on end users of your research
  • Sense check your list with a colleague, end user of research, or network member who works in the same area
  • Identify the interests and motivations of each stakeholder to incorporate into the map
  • Draw up a stakeholder map that clearly shows the relationships and interactions between stakeholders (you may find it easiest to use post it notes and map onto a wall in the first instance)
  • Keep a visual record that is as clear, simple and as engaging as possible.

Barriers

  • Can be time consuming to create a thorough map.
  • There are high levels of staff turnover in some stakeholder groups in social care, which could result in the need for regular redrafting.

Enablers

  • The visual representation is a good ‘at a glance’ record of who to consider throughout your research or impact activity.
  • The map helps to highlight issues or interests of each stakeholder group and enable them to be clustered, to ensure efficient and targeted impact activity.
  • It’s possible to categorise groups of stakeholders by importance and influence, which may change throughout the research and impact process, so having a record helps.