Overwhelming support for collaborative research infrastructure
Thanks to everyone for their help with our recent stakeholder survey, which is an important annual assessment of TERN’s progress towards our goals, in addition to the other more conventional indicators of impact that we keep track of, such as numbers of scientific publications, numbers of datasets published, and numbers of students supported. Nearly 1000 research products are attributable to TERN to date!
The survey concluded on 9 November. The 234 respondents to this year’s survey were a diverse group. Not only were they from all states and territories of Australia (as well as a few from overseas), but they were from a broad range of occupations in the ecosystem science and management community – from university researchers, to federal government policymakers, to industry consultants, to managers at NGOs. This gives us some confidence that the results are reflect TERN’s broader stakeholder community.
It will take a little while for us to work through the results in detail, and reflect on how we can use them to continue to improve our delivery to stakeholders. In the meantime we’d like to share a few of the most interesting insights with you.
First, it’s clear that there is enormously strong support for the collaborative research infrastructure delivered through initiatives such as TERN. Nearly 90% of respondents to the question, ‘How important do you think ongoing investment in fundamental collaborative research infrastructure, such as TERN, is for Australia’s ecosystem science community?’ said that ongoing investment was highly or very important.
Encouragingly, it seems that both stakeholder awareness of TERN and stakeholders’ perceptions of TERN’s relevance have improved over the past 12 months.
Growing awareness of TERN and its relevance to Australia’s ecosystem science community
Other questions showed similar trends.
TERN’s increasing engagement with stakeholders
TERN is a young organisation: we’ve been operating for a little over three years. While these signs of consistent improvement in stakeholder perceptions and satisfaction are certainly pleasing, this is only the beginning. With your ongoing help and support we will continue our focus on delivering for stakeholders and making progress towards our goals.
Published in TERN e-Newsletter November 2012
