Invitation to tender: Using quasi-experimental designs to evaluate mental health and wellbeing interventions (Ref: TASO/35)

Do you work for a higher education provider that delivers mental health and wellbeing interventions and would like support to robustly evaluate these? Apply below to be involved in an exciting upcoming TASO project that will use quasi-experimental methods.

TASO is seeking to appoint up to three higher education providers to work with an independent evaluator to test the impact of mental health and wellbeing interventions through quasi-experimental methods. These are methods which can establish a causal relationship between an intervention and outcomes, however, they rely on naturally occurring or constructed treatment and comparator groups rather than achieving this through random assignment. The independent evaluator will also conduct associated implementation and process evaluations for each intervention.

TASO will select partner providers based on factors including feasibility of the intervention for testing, how widespread/scalable the approach is, and the availability of (suitable and sufficient volumes of) data for quantitative impact evaluation. Due to the timeline of the project, we will be evaluating new or existing interventions that start being delivered in the 2024 autumn term.

Appropriate interventions will be those that aim to support student mental health and wellbeing, however, may also aim to improve other student outcomes such as retention and attainment. Interventions could include but are not limited to:

• Curriculum-based interventions such as the introduction of wellbeing or skills-based modules into courses to support wellbeing outcomes.
• Trialling changes to curriculum delivery and assessments to support wellbeing outcomes in certain courses (before rolling out further).
• Whole-institution approaches / an institution-wide change in mental health and wellbeing support, where sufficient before and after data is available.
• Referral of ‘at-risk’ students to mental health and wellbeing support.
• Mental health first aid training.

Eligibility criteria for higher education providers

• The lead applicant must be a registered English higher education provider in the approved (fee cap) category.
• Applications involving programmes or interventions that are delivered collaboratively across multiple higher education providers, or with other organisations, are welcome.

Available funding

Up to three participating providers will each receive up to £10,000 to support the resourcing of the project, which TASO estimates will be needed to participate in the inception and scoping phase, and to collect and share the outcome data with the appointed evaluator.

Project timings

• The deadline for applications is 13.00 GMT+1, 24 May 2024.
• We will hold an information webinar on Tuesday 30 April to outline the project and give higher education providers the opportunity to ask questions. Join us to find out more about the project.
• The project is likely to start with a scoping phase in June to September, before moving on to data collection in September/October.
• The length of the project will depend on the interventions being evaluated but could run for one academic year with interim reporting in March 2025 and final reporting in autumn 2025.

How to apply

For more information on the project, including the requirements and deliverables, download the invitation to tender (Word doc).

Please download the application form (Word doc) and submit by uploading using the form below by 13:00 GMT+1 on Friday 24 May 2024.

Please also complete the equality, diversity and inclusion monitoring form. This is for internal monitoring purposes only and will not impact the tender decision.