Research Ambassador training in Oldham

By GM Moving | 09 May 2024 | TAGS: "Research and learning", Evaluation, Local Pilot

Due to limited time and capacity, the Oldham team had previously faced challenges capturing data on their work adequately, or to become involved in the Research Ambassador work.  The fact that they reached out with their request in early 2024 indicates a growing realisation of, and willingness to engage with, the potential benefits of involving community Research Ambassadors in learning and data capture. This followed an interactive sensemaking session in August 2023 in which a large group of Oldham team members discussed Counts & Measures examples and their recently increased summary score on the ‘Learning and adapting’ enabler in the Place Partner survey. The Oldham team now felt ready to move forward on ‘learning and adapting’ or ‘test and learn’.  

The Oldham and Substance teams agreed to pilot a longer in-person session that combined the evaluation sensemaking meeting with a locality-specific Research Ambassador training. Around a dozen people from the locality and GM Moving attended. The aim was to introduce the Oldham team to a variety of research approaches to encourage them to: 

• Be able or more comfortable to collect data for themselves. 

• Develop research interests and skills. 

• Tell stories of their work to others and/or create outputs to show their impact. 

• Lead sensemaking or discussion sessions in the future. 

Substance presented and encouraged discussion on various questions around what research means; how to think about impact; potential data sources and what to use them for; common data collection approaches; or ways of producing visualisations and outputs. Participants were eager to share their thoughts and own experiences in lively discussions. The discussion covered general points on research methods and how this could work in the Oldham context. 

It became clear again that there was lots of work going on in Oldham but that it was not always captured sufficiently to demonstrate impact. There was not enough time and capacity for core team members to carry out their work and collect data. To try and address this challenge, and to engage with research methods in practice, participants aimed to undertake a number of research projects over the coming months. Ideas included:  

• Looking into Reflective Practice as a method, how people are finding it, and what it could be used for.  

• Observing any behaviour change in the group or wider teams over time, using the COM-B model.  

• Creating a survey for practitioners to probe barriers to community engagement, and what could be done to support community workers and volunteers.  

• Developing a questionnaire for Active Travel to better understand needs, reach and awareness of the offer. 

• Testing an approach to map possible effects of one family member becoming more active on the rest of the family members’ activity levels.  

The group aims to come back together in the future to discuss any support needs, difficulties, preliminary findings, or ways of presenting data and findings.

The Research Ambassador training session itself was a pilot on how basic research skills could be introduced to and discussed within a Place Partnership team with diverse backgrounds. It was also a further test to what extent the evaluation team could adjust its own sensemaking sessions and shape locality engagement according to Place Partnerships’ needs. 

If you'd like any information on this approach please get in touch ([email protected]).