This guide, written by Dr Poornika Ananth, is intended as a resource for policymakers to help them understand how to use qualitative research methodologies in the written public consultation process.

Qualitative data are vivid, rich, and nuanced, and are particularly beneficial when complex processes and relationships between constructs need to be understood or examined, when individuals’ lived experiences, interpretations, and social contexts need to be captured, and when knowledge is incomplete, underdeveloped, or flawed.

The brief provides guidance on how to collect and analyse qualitative data from the public in ways that account for the standard constraints of public consultation processes and enable the development of an actionable set of policy insights.

This report by Dr Chris Dimos, Dr Aida Garcia-Lazaro and Charles Carter investigates productivity and innovation in the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority (WofE CA) and offers comparisons to selected Mayoral Combined Authorities.

This research extends previous work by providing additional insights on the topic, utilising new data at the establishment level provided by the Office for National Statistics. The use of microdata enabled the aggregation of establishment-level data to the desired regional level for a wider set of establishment characteristics including ownership, size, profitability and industrial affiliation. This enables a more detailed analysis of how productivity and innovation vary across establishment characteristics.

The report also investigates the motivations and obstacles to innovation. The combination of microdata from the ONS with broader regional analysis makes this study a valuable tool for policymakers and stakeholders looking to enhance the WofE CA's business environment and regional competitiveness and successfully implement WofE CA's Plan for Innovation.

The Government faces a key balancing act: growing a world-leading life sciences sector while safeguarding patients from the risks posed by financial conflicts of interest between pharmaceutical and medical device companies and the NHS, its staff and professional bodies. Ensuring full transparency of these ties is essential, but the current disclosure system, created and overseen by the industry, does little to address these risks. Independent research and the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review have highlighted its failures. In addition, cases of avoidable patient harm and instances of major companies failing to disclose payments underscore the urgent need for reform. The Government’s proposals in 2023 offered only modest improvements.

This policy brief, written by a team of international academic researchers and UK-based patient advocates, recommends legislative changes in three key areas based on patient experience, international best practices and research evidence. The reforms will promote transparency by being comprehensive, enforceable and actionable. In so doing, they will support the Government’s core missions to strengthen the NHS and drive investment in life sciences. Following the scope of the IMMDS Review, the reforms focus on England, but their core transparency principles are relevant for all devolved administrations within the UK.

Drawing on the findings of a qualitative research study exploring the experience of working claimants on Universal Credit (UC), this new policy report by Dr Rita Griffiths and Dr Marsha Wood explores the interaction between earnings, ‘passported’ benefits and other means-tested support.

The research found that, while all participants had levels of earnings low enough to entitle them to UC, only in rare instances did UC receipt, of itself, automatically qualify them for help. Not only were application processes typically onerous and time-consuming, but many working claimants were ineligible for support due to the very low earnings thresholds which applied to most of the schemes. Others had variable earnings which meant they dipped in and out of eligibility from one month to the next. Those whose earnings rose above a certain level could find themselves financially worse off, undermining UC’s fundamental goal to ‘make work pay’. This was because the extra take home pay was often worth less than the value of the entitlements lost. These ‘cliff edges’ discouraged some people from working longer hours and earning more.

A key recommendation is for a comprehensive review to be conducted of the additional means-tested benefits, schemes and discounts that sit outside Universal Credit, exploring their interaction with earnings and their effects on work incentives and employment behaviours. This should be included as part of the review into UC and the Government’s new child poverty strategy.

The report is accompanied by a policy brief summarising the key findings and recommendations.

The research was funded by abrdn Financial Fairness Trust.

The introduction of Shared Parental Leave in the UK in April 2015 was intended to help parents share child-related responsibilities.

This policy brief, authored by Dr Joanna Clifton-Sprigg, Professor Eleonora Fichera, Professor Melanie Jones and Dr Ezgi Kaya, summarises the findings of research into the success of the Shared Parental Leave policy and makes recommendations for policy changes. The research focuses primarily on fathers as those encouraged by the policy to take up or extend leave and compares leave uptake between parents just before and after the policy introduction using large-scale nationally representative data.

This research report by Dr Rita Griffiths and Dr Marsha Wood explores how the system of monthly assessment in Universal Credit – used for assessing entitlement, recovering debts and calculating payment – is affecting income security and financial well-being in working households. The research tracked month-to-month changes in earnings and household income, in real time, between 2022 and 2023, among 61 Universal Credit (UC) claimants in 42 working households with one or two earners in paid work or self-employment. A key focus was the system of monthly assessment, in particular the monthly means test, in which the UC payment is automatically adjusted upwards or downwards based on reported changes in a household’s income in the previous month.

The research was funded by abrdn Financial Fairness Trust.

The report is accompanied by a policy brief: Working claimants navigating the ups and downs of monthly assessments in Universal Credit