Societal impact as a phenomenon is closely connected to scientific practices, thus its expressions have been part of science for a long while. However, as a concept and as an object of assessment societal impact of research has become common during the 21st century due to emphasis’ in science policy and changes in research funding.

This master’s thesis focuses on statements concerning societal impact of research in funded grant proposal research plans. Societal impact of research is defined, in the context of the thesis, as contributions that research processes and outputs make to society. Impact is understood as effects formed by flows of knowledge that emerge and manifest in interactions and artefacts related to social practices. The approach is based in practice theory which emphasises the diverse, contingent, and connected nature of social phenomena and entails that the analysed research plans are created, maintained, and changed in interconnected practices of research, research funding and science policy.

The research data consists of all grant proposal research plans from the years 2006 and 2017 funded by the Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Culture and Society. The research plans are from Academy Projects, Academy Research Fellow projects, and postdoctoral research projects. The research plans are analysed using deductive content analysis and quantification to examine (dis)similarities, variations and patterns in the statements concerning societal impact. Observations are categorized as practices and targets of societal impact. Practices are further categorized into two impact dimensions which each contain two dimension specific impact forms. Targets of societal impact are categorized separately to general and occupation related categories.

The results indicate that plans to promote knowledge flows are typical and varied among social scientists that are present in the data. Knowledge flows are slightly more likely to be planed through interaction than artefacts. The most typical interaction related practices were observed in the form of information dissemination, discussions, education, and training. As for practices related to artefacts the most typical ones concerned the form of media artefacts meaning primarily the production of popular, occupational, and open access publications. Practices were most often directed towards public sector and second most often towards private sector. No systematic differences were observed between different project types. The years 2006 and 2017, on the other hand, differed among each category used to examine societal impact. On average the prevalence and length of statements concerning societal impact increase as well as frequency and variety of practices, targets, forms, and dimensions of societal impact. The results represent similarities, varieties and systematic changes in grant proposal writing practices. They are also interpreted to indicate impact statements typical to social scientists as well as changes in research plan contents that seem to correspond with the 20th century impact agenda of science policy.