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Research & Evaluation

Paul has substantial research, questionnaire and interviewing skills, covering a wide range of techniques. These include extensive experience in the delivery and analysis of online questionnaires, as well as face to face and telepone interviewing, paper questionnaires, literature reviews and other less formal techniques.

Major projects have included:

  • Online staff satisfaction surveys for a number of organisations (in collaboration with Gill Taylor).
  • Research (with Liz Firth) into the use of client data by Age Concern, in particular for policy work around social exclusion of older people. (2008)
  • Evaluation (with Gill Taylor) of the South Yorkshire HR & Legal Advice Service, in 2007 & 2008.
  • Appointment as the independent evaluator (with Andrea Eaves) for the National ICT Hub’s £4 million programme of work from October 2005 to March 2008.
  • Baseline research (with Andrea Eaves) in 2004 for the ICT Consortium, which later won the contract to provide the National ICT Hub, into the current use of ICT in the voluntary sector and evaluation criteria for assessing future improvements.  This was subsequently extended with a follow-up in 2007.
  • Research (with Simon Davey) into ICT use and the need for support on ICT among the voluntary sector in Herefordshire and Worcestershire, in 2004.
  • The influential report Leading the Way to ICT Success, published by the Baring Foundation and Worshipful Company of Information Technologists in March 2002, researched and written with Aba Maison and Martin Jones.
  • A review of the IT support needs of 300 members of the Association of Charitable Foundations, in 2000.
  • A review (with Liz Firth) of the IT support needs of 600 London advice agencies in 1997, funded by London Boroughs Grants.
  • A survey of the information needs around funding advice of agencies in South Yorkshire, for South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau, which included recommendations to the Bureau on how better to meet these needs.

Reports available for download

Much of Paul's research is naturally confidential to the client organisation, but those listed below have been made public, and all are free to download.  Some of these reports are now quite dated.  They are included here, however, to give a flavour of my work.

Leading the way to ICT success, report funded by Baring Foundation (2002)

Baseline research for ICT Consortium (subsequently ICT Hub) (2004). Click here (333Kb)

Update to Baseline research (2007). Click here (634Kb)

Report on ICT support needs in Herefordshire (2004)

Report on the cost of ICT support under different charging philosophies (January 2006). Click here

Paper delivered to the 13th VSSN/NCVO "Researching the Voluntary Sector" Conference
5th - 6th September 2007 University of Warwick: Is the voluntary sector getting its act together on ICT?

Evaluation reports

Report on ICT support project in Newham (September 2006). PDF version (2.91Mb): click here. Word version (253Kb): click here.

Report on the iT4C volunteer programme (part of the ICT Hub) (2007). Click here (169 Kb)

National ICT Hub final report (2008). Click here (407 Kb)

Evaluation of AbilityNet's RAPL project (2008). Click here (576Kb)