“Communication.” “Dissemination.” “Engagement.”

These three words are often used to describe the collection of strategies aimed at supporting a research-practice partnership’s (RPP) efforts to share their work with various constituent groups. In some cases, we’ve heard people use these three words interchangeably, suggesting that “dissemination strategies” are essentially the equivalent of “engagement strategies”…which are basically the same as “communications strategies.” In other cases, we’ve heard RPP-ers argue that these three words are, in fact, quite different (and one of these words should not be used to describe partnership work at all!). Given this potential for disagreement, we thought it would be interesting in this Deep Dive to take a closer look at what these three words mean to NNERPP members and friends by inviting them to share how they are conceptualizing and operationalizing them. Although for some “words” may be just that, we have seen the importance of pausing and creating shared understanding of “words” generally in partnership work, since unexamined words can introduce misunderstanding and miscommunication. Because these three activities show up regularly in RPP work, we invite you to join us as we reflect more deeply on how these strategies are understood in the field.

Included in this discussion are: Callie Womble Edwards (Acting Director, Program Evaluation and Education Research, Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University), Chelsea Farley (Communications Director at the Research Alliance for New York City Schools), Jessica Holter (Communications Director at the Tennessee Education Research Alliance and at Nashville PEER), Meghan McCormick (RPP Lead based at MDRC), Rachel Ruggirello (Associate Director at the Institute for School Partnership at Washington University in St. Louis), Stacey Sexton (RPP evaluator + community facilitator for RPPforCS), Sara Slaughter (Associate Director of ERA New Orleans), and Laura Wentworth (Director of Partnerships at California Education Partners).

Questions We Posed

We invited a portion of our members and friends from the NNERPP community to respond to two questions via a survey:

[1] “When thinking about your RPP’s efforts to share its work, do you use “communication”, “dissemination”, and “engagement” strategies interchangeably?” Possible answers included “Yes”, “No, I would never”, and “Sometimes? Let me explain”.

[2] “How might these three words be the same? How might they be different? Do they all have a place in RPP work? Why or why not?”

From our eight respondents, no one said “Yes” in response to the first question, lending evidence towards confirming our working hypothesis that “communication”, “dissemination”, and “engagement” are likely not interchangeable. On the other hand, there was less unanimity in the breakdown of responses across the other two options: the group ended up evenly split among “No, I would never” and “Sometimes? Let me explain.” Interestingly, as you’ll see in the responses below, this grouping is not as divisive as it may initially appear, with RPP leaders from both groups offering similar perspectives.  

“No, I Would Never”

From the group of four that responded “No, I would never”, here is how they answered the second question listed above:

>> “I think of communication as a broad category that could encompass dissemination and engagement strategies. Dissemination is getting your work out there, plain and simple. It’s spreading the news of work being done. Dissemination alone does not mean that you’re going to have engagement. If we sent out an email newsletter that no one opened, we’d be disseminating lots of information, but we wouldn’t have any basis for expecting engagement because we wouldn’t have reached our audience. Metrics-wise, engagement can mean the number of times your links are clicked, the number of times a user spends looking at your report, or the number of times your website is visited, but I think for RPPs, it’s vital to think beyond the metrics and consider how researchers and stakeholders are engaged in the work in an ongoing way (from a project’s inception to the finished product). Also, what opportunities does the broader community have to publicly engage with the work? Engagement requires an openness and willingness to have conversations and create opportunities to listen to others’ perspectives on the work you’ve done (and the work you could be doing). I think they all have a place in RPP work because the strategies and purposes are different: spread the work widely v. dig a little deeper with stakeholders. 

[Sara Slaughter, Associate Director, Education Research Alliance for New Orleans] 

>> “To me, the terms “communication” “dissemination” and “engagement” all deal with sharing RPP information, resources, knowledge, and skills. While they all express similar messages, the difference for me is which stakeholder group you are considering. Of course, every individual stakeholder is different; however, in my experience, certain terms are more commonplace for different audiences and are more celebrated in particular spaces.   

For example, when describing internal efforts – whether within my RPP teams or their affiliated organizations – I tend to use the term “communication”. Communication is essential for an effective RPP.  It’s a part of the glue that holds an RPP together. Partners must establish and maintain open and frequent communication channels. 

On the other hand, when I am sharing RPP insights and lessons learned more broadly with external research audiences, I tend to use the term “dissemination”. Often research grants ask us to disseminate our findings via formal venues such as peer-reviewed manuscripts, technical reports, and conferences. Dissemination helps grow the field of RPPs by sharing beyond those directly impacted. Those who are curious to begin RPPs or wish for improvement strategies for their existing RPPs can benefit from dissemination efforts. 

Finally, when I am sharing RPP learnings more broadly to external practice audiences, I tend to use the term “engagement”. The heart of engagement is working together for a common goal, and I find that my practitioner partners are most excited by our shared labor towards educational equity for their/our students. Engagement is the daily work of an RPP – it’s how we show up. It’s how we make decisions. It’s how we leverage our different skill sets. It’s hard for me to consider how a RPP can be effective if the R-side and P-side are not perpetually engaged.

While this categorization helps me to make meaning of these terms, I think it’s important to share that these terms don’t always fit into these neat boxes, and I have experienced the “blurring” of those lines, too. For instance, I recently earned an “Outreach and Engagement” grant at my university to further investigate RPP work. In the grant language, “engagement” referred to the research community partnering with the people and places that surround it. So, while it’s helpful to have a common practice for when to use these terms, like many things in life, it can evolve and shift depending on the context.” 

[Dr. Callie Womble Edwards, Acting Director, Program Evaluation and Education Research, Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University]

>> “In general, I think of these terms as being quite different. To me, “communication strategies” is the overarching term that encompasses both engagement strategies and dissemination strategies, with the goals of effectively engaging the right stakeholders at the right time to impact policy and practice, and also to systematically raise the public profile of the partnership. 

In my mind, engagement strategies are more narrow, and encompass the relationship-building with partners and facilitating the use of research with specific stakeholders. This ranges from setting up regular meetings with specific teams within the partner institution so that they are regularly engaged in all aspects of the research work, to building and maintaining relationships with advisory council and steering committee members who consult on strategy along the way and who help serve as messengers for the work, to targeting specific stakeholders who would benefit from knowing, understanding, and using the research outside of the primary partnership (in TERA’s case, this is often district leaders, and with PEER, this might be community leaders). We see this as more deep engagement with the research and researchers by those who can use and implement findings directly, and our job is to help facilitate and nurture that engagement in ways that ultimately impact policy and practice. In other words, this is everything that leads up to the research brief and public release of findings that involves lots of communication, collaboration, and discussion with partners. 

On the other hand, we tend to think of dissemination strategies as not necessarily specific and targeted engagement with the research, but strategies that help raise the public profile of the organization to establish credibility in the research and policy communities. This comes in the form of the public release of research briefs and other types of publications, our website, press releases, Twitter, e-newsletters, podcasts, blog posts, presenting at research conferences, and other more public venues to reach wider audiences about who we are, what we do, and what our research is showing. Building the public profile is important for funding and generating wider interest in the work we do so we are seen as the go-to experts for education research.”

[Jessica Holter, Communications Director, Tennessee Education Research Alliance and Nashville Partnership for Educational Equity Research] 

>> “Communication is the exchange of ideas as it relates to partners in the RPP working on research together (development, conducting, using research) at the different phases. Communication is like a subset of engagement, which is all the different parts involved with working together on research. Also involved in engagement is developing and designing research and sense-making of findings, among other behaviors. In my opinion, dissemination is an RPP dirty word. It means you are sharing some form of written report summarizing research findings at the end of a research project or making a presentation about those findings in a more of a “one way” act. For example, dissemination involves thinking of the practitioners as empty vessels and the researchers “disseminating” the research into the practitioners “empty” minds.”  

[Laura Wentworth, Director of Partnerships, California Education Partners]

From the responses shared in this group, several themes emerge:  

• The three words are related in some way. Most of the RPP leaders described an underlying relationship between the three terms, although in somewhat different ways. For example, both Sara and Jessica shared that “communications” seems to be the overarching strategy that includes “engagement” and “dissemination”, while Laura thought of this relationship a little differently, in that “communication” might be thought of as a subset of “engagement.”
• The intended audience for each strategy differs. In terms of differences among the three words, a few of our respondents suggested that the intended audience for a particular strategy is the deciding factor. Callie presented this distinction very clearly, for example, describing how each share-out effort taken on by her partnership relates to a different constituent group (e.g., internal partners = communications, external research partners = dissemination, and external practice partners = engagement).
• The proposed goals for each strategy also differs. Relatedly, some of the respondents also pointed to the difference in goals that are typically associated with each of the three strategies. For example, “engagement” seems to be a more complex, nuanced term than the other two and can involve a variety of partnership-support activities such as relationship building, exchanges of information, working together, facilitation of conversations, and two-way exchanges. On the other hand, “dissemination” seems to be much simpler, commonly involving a one-way sharing out of information, according to our respondents. Generally, all seemed in agreement that “dissemination” was not a strategy they would use with those considered to be “partners” in the work, but that it nonetheless had its place. For example, an RPP might consider dissemination goals when required by a grant, when working to raise the profile of the RPP with the larger education ecosystem (or beyond), and/or to ensure that those “not in the know” of the RPP have an opportunity to hear about information that may be of interest.

“Sometimes? Let Me Explain”

From the group of four that responded “Sometimes? Let me explain”, here is how they answered the second question listed above:

>> “All of these have a place in RPP work but our team views these differently, although there are places of overlap. To us dissemination feels one-way – focused on sharing information out to a particular audience. Engagement, instead, is something very common in our RPP work. In this effort there is collaboration and intentional engagement in creating and sharing products with various stakeholder groups. With engagement there is a purposeful focus on getting stakeholders involved in this effort, informing, creating and providing feedback on the products and outcomes. Communication is more broad, yet a necessary component of RPP efforts. Open, honest, consistent, and clear communications are needed to make the work of an RPP happen. This encapsulates communications necessary for initiating and maintaining partnership activities, as well as communicating results of engagement with research along the way.”

[Rachel Ruggirello, Associate Director for the Institute for School Partnerships at Washington University in St. Louis]

>> “Everything that I’m about to write should be prefaced that I tend to use the language of the people around me. As an evaluator, I typically don’t want to alienate my partners right off the bat by being a stickler about specific words. Over the life of a partnership, though, I may start to interrogate with a team the implications of using certain words over others.

Communication seems to me the most basic of the three terms. It covers everything in my mind from meeting invitations getting out on time and to all of the right people, as well as any platforms like Slack or email — where information is reciprocally shared among members of a group. You can also communicate needs and preferences, ask questions, etc. Communication isn’t always about influencing or driving a particular action. Communication can be updates, can be check-ins. It’s also a tool for relationship maintenance.

Dissemination does feel very distinct from communication and engagement — a distinctive outward-facing connotation. I would disseminate a journal article from RPP to the world, but I would communicate within my RPP. Dissemination also seems like there is some amount of randomness or anonymity to who will engage with the thing you put out there. You can’t always know who will read a publication of yours, but you can be reasonably certain about who you communicate with in your RPP.

Engagement is less about the substance of the thing that you are trying to get across, and more the how, the process for how that gets done. You may want to communicate with parents, and you think the best way to do that will be to engage them in a family game & learn night. Engagement is much more energized than simple communication. Communicating is an email, engagement is a facilitated conversation. Whereas communication the way I framed it above is about sharing information, engagement might also be about changing someone’s mind. Another sense around the word engagement is that it is the action step of communication – if you have a purpose for communication, then you would need to come up with a strategy for engagement that enables your communication to have the impact you want.“

[Stacey Sexton, RPP evaluator + community facilitator for RPPforCS]

>> “I think these words and concepts are context-specific. When working closely with a partner we are very focused on meaningful and authentic communication. However, this type of communication is critical to effective engagement and collaboration. When we have results and are trying to share findings we are engaged in the work of dissemination but communication is a critical component of that.” 

[Meghan McCormick, RPP lead at MDRC]

>> “At the Research Alliance, we think of communication not simply as the publication of findings, but rather as a continuous process that actively engages stakeholders in all phases of our work, from setting research priorities, to developing studies, to interpreting and reporting results. Thus, for us, communication includes dissemination (i.e., sharing information about study results), but it also includes engagement (e.g., getting input from stakeholders about important research questions and feasible study designs, making sense of findings together, soliciting feedback on public communications, etc.). I would say delivering on this vision is a work in progress. A key strategic priority for us in coming years is ensuring that a wider range of stakeholders inform –and are informed by– our research.”

[Chelsea Farley, Communications Director at the Research Alliance for New York City Schools]

As mentioned earlier, although this group answered the first question (i.e., whether the three terms can be considered “interchangeable”) differently, they nonetheless echoed many of the themes we heard from the first group. For example, “engagement” strategies seem to be central and critical to RPP work, while also including the widest range of possible activities to choose from, relative to communications and dissemination. We heard once again the idea that dissemination tends to involve a “one-way” avenue of information exchange and is probably best reserved for people outside what is considered the core partnership. Activities involving “communication” for this group also appeared to be similar to what the previous group identified, including the “basics” or foundational approaches to working with others.

The similarity in responses across the two groups on question two is indeed interesting, despite the two groups being in some disagreement about question one. As Stacey mentions above, they tend to adopt the language that is utilized by partners, which partially explains their answer to the first survey question, even if they think otherwise. I had a chance to ask the rest of the group what they thought of this difference as well. Sara suggested that although folks may have answered the first question differently, what unites the answers across both groups is a recognition that communication and collaboration are integral to any RPP, despite the semantics of what each individual term might mean to a given person or organization. Rachel and Chelsea both agreed that the “NEVER” qualifier from question one is what dissuaded them from selecting it. In Rachel’s case, she mentions that she sometimes intentionally interchanges these words when describing her RPP’s communication efforts, depending on the context or knowledge of the partner. Chelsea additionally emphasized the importance of acknowledging the similarity in responses to question two, given the substantive nature of that inquiry. Finally, Chelsea also shared a number of additional questions that she and her team are puzzling over at the Research Alliance, including (i) What does it take to effectively do both public-facing communication/dissemination and the engagement work that is so central to RPPs?; (ii) What are the challenges of trying to do both things simultaneously, and how can these be overcome?; (iii) What does it mean for an RPP to have multiple stakeholder groups (who may have very different perspectives) at the table and engaged as true partners in the work? How does this complicate communications and engagement efforts?; and (iv) How important is transparency for the long-term credibility of an RPP’s work?

How About You?

As we learned in this exploration, it is very likely that “communication”, “dissemination”, and “engagement” do not mean the same things for those involved with RPPs, suggesting we should be careful when using these to describe RPP work. On the other hand, it seems all three strategies might play a role in partnership work, albeit with different purposes and for different audiences. A follow up round of exploration on this topic should certainly include the questions shared above by Chelsea. We might also probe further how worthwhile an activity “dissemination” is for RPPs, given that most of our respondents seemed to indicate that this strategy was almost exclusively reserved for “one-way” information delivery to people outside of the partnership, which seems in tension with what many RPPs strive for: “two-way” exchanges of information with close partners.

We’d love to hear from you as well! How do these three words relate in your opinion? Let us know here!

Paula Arce-Trigatti is Director of the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP).

Suggested citation: Arce-Trigatti, P. (2022). Are Communications, Dissemination, and Engagement the Same Thing? How RPPs Distinguish Among These. NNERPP Extra, 4(2), 9-15.