Research

The world is changing fast and old assumptions often no longer hold. Increasingly we are being asked to carry out research projects to help our clients take informed action.

These range from those that contribute to the development of policy to bespoke staff surveys helping our clients to identify and analyse trends in their organisation. Our focus is performance oriented and we value the importance of employee engagement in this work, as we do in all strands of our work.

We offer our clients a thorough and rigorous approach to research and have valuable partnerships across sectors that enable us to tailor our services to meet our clients' diverse requirements. 

We approach research projects by working in partnership with our clients to help ensure buy-in to and ownership of the findings. At the same time, we recognise that objectivity can be a key element of our role in research projects and adapt to a more independent approach when it is required. Our work in this area includes:

• Designing and conducting structured and semi-structured interviews for research purposes
• Design of quantitative data analysis such as surveys
• Qualitative data analysis including thematic analysis
• Analysis of qualitative and quantitative survey and interview data using relevant software packages such as SPSS, EXCEL, SYSTAT
• Applying research to policy areas
• Reporting back findings to key stakeholders through reports and presentations
• Gathering evaluation data and analysis of findings
• Making recommendations that get accepted and implemented.

We have a growing team that specialise in the field of research and:

• Are skilled facilitators with experience of in-depth, structured one-to-one interview design and practice as well as group initiatives such as focus groups
• Have strong academic credentials in leadership, organisational development and psychology. This ensures they are able to bring relevant tools, techniques, frameworks and skills to their work
• Have significant experience of producing written reports of findings in an insightful way
• Have impactful ways of presenting findings to senior personnel
• Have a successful track record of delivering large complex projects to tight deadlines and key stakeholder requirements. 

We have outlined the key stages of an example research project in order to demonstrate our approach:

Key stages of an Example Research Project

Agree scope - Meeting with the client project team to agree the scope, project plan and aims of the research. As part of this process we will also meet with key stakeholders to explore the key issues in greater depth.

Desk study of relevant previous research e.g. literature review - This will be undertaken as early in the project as is reasonable to do so and our team will be briefed with a summary of the findings.

Plan and Agree Methods of Analysis - There are a number of methods of analysis that could be applied to the data gathered. These will need to be agreed very early in the process to ensure that all stakeholders' interests and needs are met, as well as to ensure that the research methods and surrounding processes are designed in such ways as to allow the required analysis to be conducted once the data has been collated. Among the methods to be considered, we include the following:

• Frequency analysis, means and standard deviations (looking at how different sub-groups of
• respondents answered the questionnaire's different questions and groupings of questions)
• Correlation analysis
• Hypothesis testing (t-tests, etc.)
• Reliability analysis (e.g. Cronbach's alpha)
• Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis
• Cluster analysis
• Regression analysis.

Design and trial of interviews/focus groups - We will agree a standard interview/focus group protocol with the client project team which our consultants will work to.
We like to trial the interviews and focus group design prior to rolling the final design out to test the quality and quantity of the data captured.

Semi-structured interviews - We typically suggest using semi-structured interviews rather than structured interviews. Semi structured interviews provide the rigour of the structured interview process and give us the ability to probe and explore answers to gain a deeper understanding. This also enables us to capture more detail including stories and experiences.

Focus groups - Focus Groups enable our research to reach a wider audience in a short timescale and in this sense provide value for money. We ask participants to complete a brief questionnaire initially which enables us to capture qualitative and quantitative data and focus the participants' thoughts to ensure that the process benefits from everyone's input. Group discussions are captured by the facilitators on flipcharts and feed into the thematic analysis.

Thematic Analysis of Findings - The thematic analysis of findings follows the completion of all interviews and focus groups and involves analysing the data to extract and identify key themes, undertake basic qualitative analysis and summarise the content of the stories, quotes and examples we have gathered. The short questionnaire issued at the focus group also allows for some basic quantitative analysis to be undertaken.

Questionnaire design and trial - This stage allows us to design and review the design of the questionnaire ensuring that we cover all of the key issues, capture all necessary data and that it is as concise as possible to ensure high return rates. To ensure the quality of the questionnaire any initial results will be analysed by the use of the scale and for correlations between questions, allowing us to ensure that the questionnaire will provide the insights we intend of it.

Issue Questionnaire - Once the final design of the questionnaire has been agreed we will issue the questionnaire to the previously identified sample.

Analysis of Returns

• Basic statistical analysis
• We then conduct the analysis in accordance with our plan (of analysis)
• The analysis could include linking survey data to other data sources
• The analysis may be conducted using Excel and/or SPSS, with the latter being used for statistical tests.

Draft report (and presentation) - An essential element of this process is the feedback we receive from the client project team regarding the content as this may influence the design of further research methods and ensures that our final report meets expectations.

Draft (and presentation) of final report - This will be reviewed with the client Project Team in order to refine the report for delivery and presentation as required. We consider this to be key in ensuring good buy-in to findings and to appropriate improvement actions.

Key issues relating to the research process

• Client commitments
• Impact on timescales, e.g. for access to interviewees
• Objectivity of data
• Desk research
• Cleansed quantitative data
• Process risk, e.g. managing the quantitative data process
• Research subject confidentiality/anonymity vs. ability to research relationships by age, gender, team etc
• Sample design (ensuring representative)
• Sufficient sample sizes in all sub-populations of interest
• Whether data is clean / reliable enough, and/or the process of data analysis being adversely affected by data cleansing processes

For further details on our Research services please email sandra.buckley@berkshire.co.uk or call 0118 932 3580.