What are stakeholders?

- [Instructor] A stakeholder is anyone who has a stake in your research. That is someone who needs your research to get done to help them answer questions that they might have. A stakeholder may be your boss or direct supervisor. Someone who is responsible for you as an employee of the company. This person may or may not directly benefit from your research findings, but perhaps is the conduit to those that will. In fact, as a researcher, I've been in situations before when I've been responsible to others for providing results. But instead of doing the research myself, I managed staff or contractors who actually did the research and delivered the results to me. Conversely, a stakeholder may be the person that does directly benefit from your research, that needs answers to questions, but is not your direct supervisor. For example, I recently did a study where my main client point of contact was the lead developer of a web app. That developer was much more my peer than my supervisor. And we both effectively reported to the same person, his boss, who was also responsible for the contractual relationship that I had with the company. Yet, that person was really not involved in the research effort at all. So a stakeholder is perhaps a fellow researcher, or a UX designer, or lead of some type, or maybe a product manager, project manager, developer, or really, anyone else who wants to see your research succeed and wants to see that you can obtain the answers to those so important research questions. For the most part, you don't get to choose your stakeholders. Either they choose you by bringing you on as an employer or contractor, or you're matched with them by the powers that be. But ultimately, you need to work together, and more than just working together, you need to take the initiative to involve them in as much as you possibly can.