A father could measure the impact of his effort in bringing up his son and daughter by considering their success in ‘numbers’ (quantitative) – such as salary, awards and whether s/he has a permanent contract – or by looking at their norms and values, manners or belief systems (qualitative).
Any kind – can never be fully determined.
Both academic and societal impact can only ever portugal rcs data be approximated because there is no experimental condition involved, but even numbers are not objective. That being said, the level of subjectivity, of involvement, required does differ depending on the approach taken.
Whereas simple statistic results indicating impact can be counted and analysed with the help of formulas and functions (low involvement), observations of impact require the observer to keep attention (medium involvement) and consultations with those impacted would require an even greater commitment, in terms of time and energy (high involvement).
The higher level of involvement, the more subjectivity we are dealing with.
However, this does not mean that a number-based, quantitative approach is necessarily preferable. The impact that we want to achieve is dependent on our goals and in some cases having a significant positive influence on just one person, policy or proposal outweighs being cited by a group of scholars.