Turning research into action

1
Turning research into action

• Sheila Webber
• University of Sheffield, Department of
  Information Studies
• s.webber_at_sheffield.ac.uk
• August 2002

2
Challenges

• Attitudes and culture in the library/information
  centre fixed ideas and lack of will
• Lack of planning
• Lack of resources (money/ people etc.) to act on
  findings
• Political issues e.g. change in politics of
  funding body might mean new priorities
• Personnel changes lack of ownership, different
  opinions to old management
• The committee that commissioned it has been
  dissolved

3
Challenges

• Findings imply big changes overwhelming,
  daunting, threatening
• Realisation that research methods were flawed and
  research is useless
• Data gets collected but not analysed
• Data gets collected and analysed but not written
  up
• Data gets collected, analysed and written up but
  then gets politely filed away

4
Solutions include

• Project planning clear aims
• Seen as part of service planning, not isolated
• Realistic budgeting of resources and time
• Vision, enthusiasm, commitment
• Time devoted to analysing, presenting,
  disseminating and discussing data

5
Solutions include

• Not just one top persons baby
• Ownership involvement from the people who could
  be involved in implementing changes to services
• Taking account of political realities, exploiting
  current enthusiasms of funding bodies

6
Your own ideas??
7
Auditing skills and knowledge

• Groups of about 4
• Introduce yourselves
• Compile aggregated list of
• Where you work
• Individuals relevant skills/ knowledge
• Your experience of market research
• Other market research that has been carried out
  in your current organisation
• Each group reports back on this information
  (appoint a person to do this)

8
For tomorrow

• Read Tom Wildings case study, so can have head
  start on exercise tomorrow

9
Wilding case study

• Get into groups of about 3 or 4
• Examine the case study
• Propose a solution
• Report back
• Discuss see which solutions Tom likes!

10
Exercise

• Get into groups of about 3 or 4
• Choose a real problem or question that one of you
  wants to investigate
• Identify and describe in a few sentences what the
  problem is and what the research question(s) are
• Identify the research methods
• Identify what you would do to ensure action to
  follow up
• PowerPoint presentations from each group