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As part of the new APP guidance, the higher education (HE) sector will be required to publish more research and evaluation outputs. This will come with a new set of challenges – what’s the process for securing research ethics for APP evaluations? What are the barriers to publishing APP evaluations?

To better understand these challenges, we’re running a short survey to map current approaches to obtaining research ethics, previous experience with publishing APP evaluations and thoughts on developing a central hub for collating evaluation evidence.

The survey forms part of a new project with RSM UK to scope the perceptions and preferences of the HE sector ahead of publishing more research and evaluation outputs linked to APPs.

The project will consider:

  • The requirement to publish APP evaluations means there is likely to be an increase in the number of studies that go through an ethical approval process. This will have practical implications for APP teams and Research Ethics Committees.
  • To ensure the evidence from evaluations is simple to access and assess, there needs to be a central hub where it is collated and synthesised.
  • The hub should include a platform for the sector to access up-to-date summaries of the evidence, including information on the approach to research ethics for each evaluation or study.

Dr Priya Khambhaita, Consulting Director at RSM UK:

“I am very pleased that the Social Policy team at RSM are partnering with TASO on this important project. This is the third in a series of important work that RSM will deliver for TASO, to explore current perceptions and future preferences of the sector as it prepares to publish research and evaluation linked to Access and Participation Plans. RSM have launched a survey to engage with the sector and will be following this up with in-depth qualitative research to further explore these areas.”

This survey is now closed.

 

RSM UK was selected after an open call for suppliers in October 2023.