Evaluation of Partnerships for Public Awareness
Purpose
The purpose of this evaluation was to assess whether the Partnerships for Public Awareness (PPA) scheme and the projects supported within the scheme were contributing to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Public Awareness Objective. The PPA scheme sits within a wider portfolio of public awareness activities supported by EPSRC.
Impact of the Scheme
It was difficult to assess the reach and impact of the scheme on public audiences. Our calculations suggest that it is reasonable to claim that over 120,000 school pupils and almost 10,000 teachers have been reached through PPA awards. The combined public audiences claimed are almost 3 million. However, we suggest that this figure may well be unreliable, because of inconsistencies in data collection.
It is clear however, that the PPA scheme is reaching out effectively to, and engaging, one of EPSRC’s important public awareness audiences, its own researchers.
Award Holders and Their Projects
The completed projects used a number of different delivery mechanisms, and there is no compelling evidence that any particular type of approach is inherently better than any other. There is some evidence that it might be more difficult to make projects based on websites and videos successful, but some award holders have achieved this.
Most projects address more than one audience and this is a potential concern. A number of award holders and partners have indicated that the ability of partnerships to effectively market projects is an area of weakness. The more audiences a project targets, the greater the marketing skill that is required.
Although school-based audiences formed the majority of target audiences, over half the projects targeted public audiences. In the context of targeting schools, there are still some weaknesses in partnerships’ understanding of the education system. EPSRC could play an active role in encouraging appropriate training for award holders.
Project Support
Institutions
The award holders report that their heads of department are largely favourable to public awareness work, a view supported by our survey of heads of department.
There are however, constraints relating to budgets and time that impact on the ability and willingness of researchers and institutions to undertake public awareness work. Moreover, this type of work is not recognised by the Research Assessment Exercise, although a number of award holders report that PPA projects have led to additional benefits that have helped their research career. In total, 37 of the 61 respondents to the award holders’ survey cited at least one of the following benefits:
- My profile has been raised within my institution
- I have made contacts for my research that I would not otherwise have made
- I have a better understanding of how users view my research
- My profile has been raised within my field
Partners
From the award holders’ perspectives, partnerships have generally been a good thing. A feature of the majority of successful partnerships was that the partners already knew each other and were comfortable working together. Where partnerships were less successful it was generally because expectations were not met either through late delivery, different priorities or partners’ failure to allocate sufficient time. So whilst partnerships can be a powerful way of augmenting researchers’ skills, managing partnerships can be a task in itself.
Mentors
The award holders, who had had them, appreciated the mentors. It is too early to say whether or not the mentors have had a positive impact on the overall quality of projects, due to the small number of mentored projects that have been completed. We recommended maintaining this element of the scheme, monitoring the satisfaction of award holders and the quality of projects over a longer time period.
EPSRC
EPSRC offers a substantial amount of additional non-financial support to PPA award holders. Not all of the award holders recognise, or make use of, the support mechanisms offered by EPSRC. However, the annual meeting is generally regarded as valuable and there are things that award holders feel EPSRC can offer related to providing access to skills and specialist knowledge. Raising awareness of what is already on offer and responding to award holders’ suggestions could strengthen the support offered by EPSRC.
Scheme Processes
We identified three areas of the administrative processes that could be improved. Firstly, the application form could more effectively help applicants to think through the planning associated with delivering the activity. Secondly, the final report form should be designed to ensure that it captures all the relevant monitoring and evaluation data or learning acquired by the award holder. Finally EPSRC needs to ensure that its management information systems can use this data.
Strengths
The principal strengths of the PPA scheme are:
- the way that it engages a range of EPSRC researchers;
- the significant sums of funding provided;
- the comprehensive suite of additional support mechanisms that EPSRC offers in addition to the funding;
- the efforts made to raise standards in public awareness work, through the engagement of partners with specialist skills; and
- the additional benefits that accrue to researchers.
The PPA Awards scheme is now discontinued.
The guide is available from EPSRC’s website from the link below:
PPA Good Practice Guide