The Researchers’ View
Steven Wooding, Jonathan Grant
Prepared for the Higher Education Funding Council for England- RAND Europe
This report, prepared for and funded by the Joint Funding Bodies’ Review of Research Assessment, presents findings from a series of nine facilitated workshops held with academics and research managers across the UK in December 2002. The objective of the workshops was to investigate views of research quality and attitudes
towards different models of research assessment. This report is intended to inform the deliberations of Sir Gareth Roberts’ review1 of how research at UK higher education institutions is assessed.
The report outlines the recurring themes and issues raised by the 142 participants in the workshops. The participants, academics and research managers, represented over one third of the 173 institutions that submitted to the Research Assessment Exercise in 2001.
This report will be of interest to those concerned with research assessment and evaluation in academic research, both practitioners and policy makers. The report provides a survey of the issues of importance and concern to those involved in academic research and the management of that research. The first volume of this report describes the methodology and details the findings of the work. The second volume contains additional source data. Both of the publications can be obtained from the website of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research) or RAND Europe (http://www.randeurope.org, publication number: MR-1698-HEFCE).
