Research & Innovation Services

Evaluating Research Culture

Evaluating our research culture, the needs of our colleagues and the effectiveness of our culture development initiatives is an essential part of our work.

Supporting and maintaining the development of an engaging, fair, and collegial research culture requires us to engage in consultation, to survey the landscape, and to ensure representation of a wide range of voices, on a range of different issues.

We do this though:

• A Research Culture Survey: Our survey was administered in 2019 to establish priorities and devise the institutional Research Culture Action Plan, and again in 2021 as a post-Covid reorientation. 
• Strategic data gathering: Research culture development work, by its nature, also generates a continuous wealth of engagement data, opinions, evaluation data, feedback, input, demographics data, dialogue, meta-analyses, common threads, complex stories, anecdotes, complaints, reflections, and personal and organisational insights.
• Regular reporting: The Lab for Academic Culture was established at the University of Glasgow in 2020 to ensure ongoing reflective critique of our data, and how it is used to define priorities and monitor progress through a range of evaluation mechanisms. We also report regularly to the University's PGR Executive Board, and Research Planning and Strategy Committee.
• Open sharing: we share project rationale, design, delivery, outcomes and impact through our blog - the Auditorium. We communicate successes and failures, as well as plans for future enhancement.
• Representation Channels: we have established the Research Culture Commons, the Research Staff Assembly, and the Research Professional Staff Network to provide us with regular and ongoing dialogue across our research communities.
• Comments Box: We maintain an anonymous comments box where you can tell us anything else you need us to know. 

In the video linked below, Dr Rachel Herries (Research Culture Manager) and Dr Kay Guccione (Head of Research Culture and Researcher Development) ask: "What constitutes data in research culture development, how do we manage data stewardship, and what does 'open' look like for us?"