ESRC DTP: Real World Research - Social Science Solutions Workshop

This workshop is designed to provide an overview of real world research – and in particular, of evaluation research that is commissioned, designed and delivered in the real world, with all its unpredictability, mistakes, and unintended consequences.

The focus is on evaluation research because most funders of commissioned research are interested in knowing more about how interventions to address social problems can be most effective, and about how they should change their policies and work programmes, and about what all this might mean for their own (and their partners’) budgets.

It is important to be able to design evaluations that can help them to know those things, and to avoid designing ones that do not!

After going over some of the key features of good quality evaluation research - and some of the key debates about how it should be done, and how its quality should be assessed – we will look at some brief specifications for actual commissioned research, to think about how we might design and deliver those, assess interests relating to them, and identify any key ethical issues that they might raise.

Examples will be provided on the day, and some worked responses will also be provided at the end of each discussion. Attendees can come prepared with questions relating to their own research if they wish, as those could feed nicely into the group discussion.

This workshop is led by the Managing Director of an independent consulting organisation which has worked for many years with a range of government and non-government organisations on research design and evaluations (both within and outside the UK).

• • Please note it is compulsory for all ESRC students to attend this workshop once during their studentship**

• Postgraduates (ESRC DTP)
• Postgraduates in the Social Sciences
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available

• Presentations and discussion

• Priority booking is given to ESRC DTP students in the first instance
• All ESRC DTP students must attend this workshop once during the lifetime of their studentship

• One half day session

• Yearly