A Guide to Commissioning Cultural Sector Research in the South West of England

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

Appendices

Section 1: GETTING IT RIGHT UP FRONT: THE BIG QUESTIONS

Step Three: Do I have the resources available to do the work?

The next step is to decide whether you can undertake the project in-house or whether you will need to employ a research company or consultant to do it for you. Ask yourself:

Q Do I have the skills?
Q Do I have the time?
Q Do I have the resources to do this myself?

Time is a particularly big issue in undertaking and managing research projects, as are resources, particularly in the form of support from your line-manager or team.

Research projects take time to do well, no matter what their scale. You need to make an honest assessment of how much time this will take you, whether or not you can do the research project alongside your existing workload and, if not, who will provide support and assistance.

"There just wasn’t enough time to put the brief together, to monitor what was going on and then to disseminate the information – in the end the project just got totally out of hand and the report just sat there on a shelf"
Commissioner

Talk to your line manager to assess the level of support you are likely to get from him/her to do the research (either as the researcher or as the project manager).

[ Previous Page | Next Page ]

[ Index ]

Printable version