Professor Laura Caulfield

Director of the Institute for Community Research and Development

Professor Laura Caulfield is Director of the Institute for Community Research and Development. Laura has been undertaking research with public, private, and third-sector agencies since 2001, and is an expert in bridging the gap between evidence, policy, and practice.

She primarily works on the evaluation of programmes and has received funding from the Home Office, Economic and Social Research Council, the Arts Alliance, the NHS, the Youth Offending Service, the Ministry of Justice, and several third-sector organisations.

Laura has significant leadership experience and is an expert in research design, and qualitative and quantitative methods. Her latest book, ‘Criminological Skills and Research for Beginners’ was published in March 2018.

Laura designed and leads the evaluation strand of the PACE project.

The Institute for Community Research and Development have designed the evaluation strand of the PACE project. Our aim is to meaningfully engage students in the evaluation and to understand and access existing data available internally. 

The evaluation design involves two key strands: 

  1. Outcome and impact evaluation: where we will measure progress in the outcomes that the project is to achieve and assesses the project’s effectiveness in achieving its ultimate goals (impacts). 
  2. Process evaluation will enable us to determine whether project activities have been developed and implemented as intended, focused on understanding how new approaches have evolved, and the relationship between this and the outcomes and impact. This element will help identify any barriers to success and helped support the continued development of the project. 

 

Co-production is running through the evaluation with current students working as peer researchers, trained and supported by the Institute for Community Research and Development who are highly experienced in evaluation design and working with peer and community researchers. 

Wrapped around the project delivery is evaluation of the process and impact of taking part in coproducing a mental health support intervention. This element of the evaluation seeks to understand how successful the collaborative and coproduced work has been. This strand also seeks to understand the impact on participants. Observations and qualitative exploration of working collaboratively with this variety of stakeholders will provide rich and meaningful data on engagement and collaboration. The findings from this element of the evaluation will be used to develop a model for coproduction in developing mental health initiatives and for coproduction in University settings, which will be shared across the sector. Co-production is running through the evaluation with students and graduate members of the NHSRC. 

ICRD have developed an innovative model of engagement that brings community assets (in this case, peer researchers) to the forefront of co-production and co-design of community led solutions. Our model harnesses the knowledge and expertise of existing students, builds on their existing research skills, and provides development opportunities through access to research skills training and practical experience covering: 

  1. learning research skills;
  2. practicing research skills; 
  3. analysing data and report writing;
  4. Dissemination and influencing policy and practice.  

Peer researchers can gain the trust of research participants and because peer researchers are members of their community, they are well-placed to support meaningful engagement and participation in the research and evaluation process. Peer researchers can also identify issues not considered when research and evaluation questions are being developed, thus informing the research and evaluation process. We have recruited and trained a cohort of peer researchers as part of the project to work on the ongoing evaluation.