Engaged? definition and data

I need to know what engagement is, and as Richard Holliman points out in the Engaging Research blog "Public engagement with research and school-university partnership work means different things to different people". But if I'm working on engagement with the JuxtaLearn project and evaluating engagement, then I need to know what it is, what creates it, what its results are, and I need to know what data to collect in order to evaluate engagement. So I have to know what engagement is before I can evaluate it.
The OU 'Public Engagement with Research Catalyst Team defines engaged research thus:

Excellent public engagement with research is reflected in the different ways that researchers meaningfully connect and share research with various stakeholders, user communities and members of the public. Done well, public engagement with research will generate benefits, changes and effects for all participants as they share knowledge, expertise and skills. Excellence will be demonstrated partly through recognition of the contributions that all participants make to the shaping of research agendas, the processes of conducting research, and in the products of that research.[http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/per/?page_id=1621]

I read two actions here, where engagement

1.  is reflected
2. generates

"Excellent public engagement with research is reflected..." suggests that we'll recognise engagement when we see it, in the way that I recognise myself when I see myself in the mirror. But the reflection is not me but an image of me. Magritte painted "the Treachery of Images" as a pipe under which he wrote, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", French for "This is not a pipe", and indeed the painting is merely an image of a pipe, not a pipe. So we do not in the first sentence of the above definition of engagement have a definition of engagement, merely a statement that it will be (passive voice) reflected. I want to know actions: how to engage, what I have to do to engage, and I need to know beforehand what those actions are so I can plan my engagement and others' engagement, not have to recognise it after the event, when it's too late.
 "Done well, public engagement with research will generate benefits,..” This part of the definition tells me that engagement generates, I understand an action that "generates benefits, changes and effects" is an engaged action. Therefore to engage, I must plan to generate benefits, changes and effects. And from the first part of the definition, I will recognise engagement through the (I assume) consequent reflections that results from the action of generating.
What might an engaged relationship be? It might require commitment. a context with visibility (behaviour is public), volition (with an element of choice) and irrevocability (behaviour cannot be undone) “should generate stronger commitment” (Weick, 1995: p159). Benefits and changes must be the consequent "shared knowledge, expertise and skills". Would such context and behaviour generate benefits, changes and effects?
The given definition provides a means to recognise data to collect, but we must accept the data may be wrong data if the definition is flawed. What we may have however, is an opportunity to identify engagement and create a better definition.