Which methods were considered ‘highly effective’?
No single method was considered ‘highly effective’ by more than half of respondents. The only one to achieve a ‘highly effective’ rating from 50% of respondents was “Presentation of the service to Members individually, interviews with Members“.
The methods with the most ratings as ‘highly effective’ are below. These were rated ‘highly effective’ by more than 33% of respondents.
Five methods most often rated as ‘highly effective’
- Presentation of the service to Members individually, interviews with Members
- Presentation of services to groups of Members
- Personal meeting with Member when they request research
- Training/induction for staff of Members in how to use the research service, benefits of research
- Promotional emails – newsletters, adverts etc
The list above indicates the (presumed) ‘wisdom of the crowd’ – it picks out methods which are fairly widely used and highly-rated. It can also be interesting to consider the methods which are less widely used but are nonetheless highly rated by those who deploy them. Taking into account only the ratings by users of a method, the methods below are rated as ‘highly effective’ by at least 50% of them. Three items are shared with the previous list (italicised), but three new items come into focus.
Six methods rated as ‘highly effective’ by those who use them
- ‘Open Day’ or ‘Research week’ events
- Presentation of the service to Members individually, interviews with Members
- Propose in-person discussion to get feedback when research is delivered to a Member
- Training/induction for staff of Members in how to use the research service, benefits of research
- Personal meeting with Member when they request research
- Presentation of the service in Committee meetings.
The first is the most striking – relatively little used (32% of respondents) but highly-rated by five out of the seven users.
Which methods have some effect for all services that use them?
Only three methods were felt to have some effect by all services that used them:
- Presentation of the service in Committee meetings
- Request for feedback by form when research is delivered to a Member
- Presence of research staff in Committee meetings
Only some services are involved with committees so this area of work is somewhat downplayed by the results from the full survey. But it is very important for those who do work with committees. The return from Israel gives a flavour: “When a researcher from the RIC [Research & Information Centre] has prepared a study or briefing in preparation or as background for a committee meeting, the researcher is present in the committee meeting and typically also presents the main findings from his/her work at the beginning of the meeting; this also exposes other MKs in the committee to our products. In cases when no specific research has been prepared for a committee meeting, the RIC can send the committee previous papers or other relevant information based on the acquired experience, expertise and knowledge of the topic, and often the relevant researcher can also present in the committee meeting in these situations”.
For which methods is it ‘difficult to know’ the results?
All other methods had some users who were in doubt about their effect – they found it difficult to know the result. The nine methods below had at least least 25% of their users in doubt as the results:
- Surveys of Members (38% of users found it difficult to know the results in terms of profile-raising)
- Common visual identity for all products and promotional materials – same ‘look and feel’ (35%)
- Provides parliamentary strengthening support to other parliaments (32%)
- Branding on all research products (29%)
- External engagement/publication by staff research experts (29%)
- Promotional videos (29%)
- Promotional gadgets, clothing, bags etc (29%)
- Permanent displays of hard-copy research reports (25%)
- Publication of performance data for the research service (25%)
This does not mean that these methods are ineffective but simply that their use is based on external examples, advice or intuition – rather than concrete evidence of local results – by quite a high proportion of the services using them. Only one from this list (parliamentary strengthening) is in the top eight of methods used.
Next in ‘Raising the Profile’:
Results in detail. Part 5 – Commentary by the respondents
All posts on ‘Raising the Profile’
Respondents comments on methods
2 thoughts on “‘Raising the profile’ / 4. Methods identified as effective”