research funding and no outputs?

[boomshakalika]

I am not linked in with academic or research circles so don't know where to go to get information about a project - maybe someone can help me?

I was asked to a seminar on an issue which affects me to find out about an exciting new research project. I was also asked to be on an advisory group to help out with ideas about recruitment given my own experience.

At this initial seminar we were told that the researcher had got 300k from the British Academy for a new research project, over 3 years

This person loosely outlined a programme of work for this research along with outputs and dissemination and stressed how important this advisory group was going to be. They were to contact key people to arrange a meeting.

I never heard anything so assumed that I wasnt needed but as I thought the research was really important for this issue, I have been interested to find out more.

I contacted them directly after 2.5 yrs and they said that they hadn't been able to recruit a single participant in the time and this was due to no-one wanting to be on the advisory group to advise on recruitment methods. I was really surprised at this and told them that I had never been contacted. the researcher was keen to then meet me but never showed up for our meeting and then never responded to emails.

This person doesnt appear to have done anything at all with the monies - there is no blogs, no articles, no writing, no info pieces or updates at all. Nothing.

This researcher has moved on and now has received a massive new research grant for different research in a different university.
I am really surprised that the British Academy didn't have closer monitoring and accountability in place for such projects. I really want to know what happened with this work and if there is learning that could be shared for the future?

This seems even more important as I was at a meeting today where we were told that no money will be put into researching this particular issue as the British Academy put in 300k a few years ago.

who could I talk to find out what happened with this original research?

where could another person (me) go to to find out what hapened with that work, what accountability measures there were in place

Blimey that is terrible. Watching with interest. I would contact the British Academy, personally.

The researcher’s excuse was about as flimsy as it gets. Who needs an advisory board to advise on recruitment methods? I’ve honestly never heard anything so bullshit ridiculous.

dontcallup - could I contact british academy directly ( I have grant number from the original announcement)? is that a "done" thing?

Absolutely. I work in academia and to be honest, I want to call them up myself!

(I won’t! But someone should.)

Ok. I will do that this week.

I was going to contact the researcher directly at their new university to ask but given they never responded to my other attempts, I hold out little hope.

I think I will go both directions and see what I can find.

I think there could be valuable learning around what methods used to recruit people (it was to be a small sample of 30 people for qualitative interviews along with a larger scale survey). I never saw any information, flyers, posters anywhere which tbh I probably would have.

let us know what you find out, OP?

Will report back.

Academic here, you should be able to contact the British Academy and ask for some sort of feedback. It may even be documented in an annual report somewhere. There are often public accountability processes in place and people who deal with these requests. A freedom of information request may also yield something.

That said, it isn’t unheard of to fail to recruit any participants for a study. I work in a clinical trials centre and we have a couple trials where we have literally not been able to find anyone, but these are usually quite specific circumstances with uncommon conditions and hard to meet criteria. If it’s a study recruiting through the NHS, there are sometimes issues with the NHS or the university refusing to permit the research to be carried out for some bureaucratic reason. Our research centre lost a large grant recently because one office refused to sign off on a required form (really frustrating!).

There are also personal reasons why these things don’t pan out - health issues of the researcher requiring leave and the project couldn’t go ahead. An unexpected job change and the funding can’t be transferred to another university, etc.

I think you should be able to get some answers either from the British Academy or the university (who will definitely process a FOI request from you).

I should add though that one question to ask is: did the researcher actually have this funding to start with? It can take a few years of prep work pulling together advisory boards and recruitment strategies before funding can be secured. It’s possible in the end the grant was never awarded.

Many grants are awarded by funders, but this doesn't mean they hand over £300K in one go!

Usually you have to put in a claim every quarter, based on actual expenditure to date. The claim has to be supported by clear evidence of expenditure, eg the researcher's salary, any equipment bought (eg a pc for them), marketing activity, travel expenses for participants etc etc. The claim is prepared by the institution's finance or research office to strict deadlines. Claiming is hugely labour intensive, but it's the only way to get the money out of the funder.
If they didn't spend much of the money, the BA might have withdrawn the rest of the grant. But only they will know. Good luck finding out!

How did you get on?