CALL Vol. 24 No. 49 |

Social impact assessment between evaluative research and formative function.

Social impact assessment represents a crucial challenge for pedagogical research. This is especially true for complex educational, training, and social programs and projects involving a plurality of actors, contexts, and targets, where assessing impact means making visible long-term outcomes and transformations that affect not only direct beneficiaries but also territories, communities, organizations, and policymakers. Social impact assessment has long been a critical issue in educational development and intervention processes. Even in the face of significant investments, detecting the real impact of implemented interventions is not automatic: methodological complexity, resource and time constraints, and the challenge of tracking results longitudinally over the long term have often rendered impact assessment a residual, non-rigorous, or methodologically inadequate activity (Baker, 2000; De Aloe, Baciccola, & Braga, 2023).

In the international debate, social impact assessment is increasingly conceived as a systematic process of analyzing, monitoring, and managing the social consequences of planned interventions, which accompanies the entire life cycle of actions and aims to strengthen the capacity of the involved stakeholders to understand and respond to change (Esteves, Franks, & Vanclay, 2012). From this perspective, the most recent international policy guidelines emphasize that social impact assessment and measurement cannot be reduced to ex-post reporting exercises, but must be integrated into decision-making processes and organizational learning systems. In particular, the OECD’s “Policy Guide on Social Impact Measurement for the Social and Solidarity Economy” (2023) highlights the strategic role of impact evidence in supporting practice improvement, intervention innovation, and policy learning, promoting conditions that favor the reflective use of data by the actors involved. Consistently, the guide “Measure, Manage and Maximise Your Impact” (OECD & European Union, 2024) proposes a cyclical conception of impact assessment, wherein the production of evidence is closely connected to its interpretation and use to guide action, strengthening organizations' capacity to learn from experience and improve the effectiveness and sustainability of educational and social interventions.

Social impact assessment is called upon to overcome a merely technical or instrumental conception, to be understood as a process that—starting from the production and use of evidence—accompanies action, guides decisions, and supports improvement and learning within educational and social contexts. In this framework, it is useful to draw a distinction, despite their close interrelation, between evaluation and evaluative research: while the latter constitutes the founding element that guarantees scientific rigor, reliability of procedures, and the quality of the evidence produced, evaluation configures itself as a broader and intrinsically action-oriented process (concerning organizational management, decision-making, and consultancy), which nevertheless integrates evaluative research within its own dynamics, because it represents the engine and the rationale of evaluation and its effectiveness (Bezzi, 2003). By not reducing social impact assessment to a technical measurement exercise, it can be understood as a process aimed at making visible the social value added generated by interventions and organizations (Zamagni, Venturi, & Rago, 2015), namely the actual contribution produced in terms of change regarding the needs, problems, and dynamics present in the reference contexts.

Social impact assessment is also called upon to overcome an interpretation centered solely on causal attribution, shifting towards an understanding of the functioning mechanisms of interventions, implementation conditions, and the differences produced across various contexts. Indeed, the ability to provide robust explanations and to aspire to the replicability of results is linked to the presence of explicit program theories and comparable contextual conditions; in their absence, evaluation risks producing partial or poorly transferable evidence, fueling a compliance-driven and therefore scarcely useful and usable conception of evaluation itself. This leads to a conception of impact assessment as a situated heuristic process, attentive to uncertainty, the evolution of interventions, and the emergence of unintended effects, rather than to simplified or standardized interpretations (Stern, 2016). From this perspective, adopting a transformative approach to research and evaluation places emphasis not only on the generation of evidence, but also on the practitioners' ability to interrogate conditions of equity, value the knowledge of the groups involved, and support empowerment within decision-making and planning processes. It implies an ethical commitment oriented towards social justice and the active participation of stakeholders, fostering paths of reflective learning and professional development that go beyond the idea of evaluation as a mere tool for measuring results (Mertens, 2021).

In light of these reflections, this Call for Papers aims to collect theoretical or empirical contributions that fall within one or more of the following thematic areas.

Epistemology and methodology of social impact assessment

Contributions that focus on:

• Paradigms and theoretical-methodological approaches to social impact assessment;

• Methods, research designs, and triangulation strategies;

• The social value of evidence and the limitations of evaluative models;

• The replicability, transferability, and adaptability of social impact assessment designs;

• Ethical issues and responsibilities in evaluative processes within the social and educational fields.

Participatory, formative, and transformative dimensions of evaluation and evaluative research applied to social impact assessment

Contributions that analyze evaluation as a:

• Device for continuous training and organizational learning;

• Transformative research practice and participatory evaluation;

• Lever for the development of professional skills and professionalization processes;

• Opportunity for social change and innovation.

Models and tools for social impact assessment

Contributions dedicated to the presentation of evaluative practices and case studies discussing:

• Conceptual models for social impact assessment;

• Models and frameworks of social impact indicators;

• The value and impact of interventions in relation to the needs of the reference contexts, including emerging needs or unexpected results;

• The use of measurement tools and techniques, both standardized and constructed/validated based on specific research hypotheses and objectives;

• The sustainability of evaluative models and the assessment of project sustainability.

Social impact assessment, decision-making, and policy learning

Contributions that analyze the role of social impact assessment in processes of:

• Decision support at organizational, network, and institutional levels;

• Policy learning, regarding the use of evidence in defining, implementing, and revising public policies;

• Accountability, transparency, and governance, particularly within the social economy and Third Sector contexts;

• Programming by funding bodies and resource allocation.

The Call for Papers is linked to the Conference “Social Impact Assessment between evaluative research and formative function” held in Florence on July 2-3, 2026, organized by the Department of Education, Languages, Intercultures, Literatures and Psychology of the University of Florence, under the patronage of the Italian Evaluation Association (AIV) and the Permanent Forum for Adult Education.

Guest Editors

• Francesco De Maria, University of Florence

• Salvatore Patera, International University of Language and Media (UNINT), Rome

• Emanuela M. Torre, University of Turin

Proposals must be submitted no later than September 7th, 2026, through the journal's platform (https://www.edaforum.it/ojs/index.php/LLL/about/submissions). The publication of issue n.49 is scheduled for November 2026.