Commissioning research
Good practice guidelines from the Child Protection in Sport Unit
One of the national Standards for safeguarding and protecting children in sport published by the Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU) in 2006 is an implementation standard that includes monitoring and evaluation.
Many sport agencies conduct research and information gathering in-house and others use the services of specialist researchers. Already, several sport delivery agencies have commissioned research into various aspects of their safeguarding work and more may do so over the next few years in order to demonstrate compliance with the new Standards and to help them understand better their own needs and performance in this area.
The CPSU is occasionally asked to comment on research work or to advise on the collection and analysis of data/information, a service which is over and above its core business.
It has become evident that the quality of research on safeguarding in sport varies. Some has undoubtedly assisted NGBs and others in focussing their safeguarding strategies and improving child safety in sport. However, in some cases, weak research designs have been adopted, inappropriate people have been approached and unwitting breaches of ethics and intellectual property rights have occurred.
These best practice guidelines have been drawn up in order to allow all those interested in effective safeguarding in sport to work together to ensure that any commissioned research on the subject is of the highest possible standard and conforms to best research practice.
Preparing a tender inviting research proposals
- Make sure you have budgetary clearance before you start down the research road.
- Identify stakeholders and experts who need to be consulted about the research.
- Agree the commissioning process - will you invite competitive tenders by advertising, contacting a range of invited applicants, commissioning from a preferred source etc?
- Agree the key issues to be covered in your research agreement between your organisation and the researchers - e.g. who will ‘own’ the findings from research? Who will decide how findings will be published or used? What will happen if your organisation or the researcher wants to pull out of the research before it is finished? etc.
- What will be your criteria for success and quality for the research.
- Use a written research brief which sets out your precise expectations, the proposed timescale, nature of research outputs required (interim/final reports, presentations etc.), budgetary limits and what is included/excluded from these costs. A sharp set of research questions from you will save lots of time negotiating misunderstandings later on. Useful links:
- Make it clear what information, access and support services are available to the researcher (e.g. confidential files, committee meetings, contact details etc.).
Selecting your research consultants
- Make sure you follow any necessary tendering procedures within your organisation (e.g. in local authority departments or for projects over a certain price). Some organisations and some price limits allow for consultants simply to be appointed directly but it is always advisable to test your appointees against the market.
- If you decide to invite bids, use written proposals and/or interviews and/or presentations to at least one member of your organisation, including, if possible, someone with authority over the budget.
- Look at the track record and other relevant qualifications of your applicants. This may include testimonials from past clients, external academic and/or business qualifications, CVs and professional scientific credentials (e.g. membership and accreditation of relevant scientific societies). Your clients should have:
- knowledge and understanding of safeguarding in sport
- appropriate degrees, professional and industrial experience
- knowledge of research designs and analysis methods
- skills in interpreting their data to people in the sports world
- skills in converting their findings into practical recommendations.
- If you decide to invite bids, use written proposals and/or interviews and/or presentations to at least one member of your organisation, including, if possible, someone with authority over the budget.
During the project
- For large scale of lengthy pieces of work, set up a Steering Group with representatives of the research team and your agency on it. If possible, also ask a suitable external person to sit on this group (and offer them travel expenses). Make sure your steering group really does steer! Ask your project liaison person to chair the group and keep and distribute a full written record of what is discussed and agreed.
- For short projects, it is still useful to work with a 'virtual' steering group that may meet occasionally through e-mail or telephone contact.
- Keep in touch and try to pre-empt difficulties. Ask for a time plan from the research director and make sure this does not slip.
After the project
- Settle your invoices promptly (within two months). Small businesses and self-employed researchers are hit hard by late payers.
- Provide some honest, written feedback to your consultants within a reasonable timescale (ideally not more than 4-6 weeks).
- Monitor the publication of findings and make sure that you get copies of any papers that emanate from the project. As the client, you are entitled to embargo publications but only if this is part of your initial agreement with the researchers.
- Above all, USE the findings from the work. Distribute the research report/findings as widely as possible within your organisation, through executive summaries, newsletter articles or other means, to get the message out. If you cannot easily do this then you probably selected the wrong researchers in the first place.
Intellectual Property Rights
Below is a copy of the Intellectual Property Protocol approved by the CPSU's Research Task Force on 4 July 2002 and ratified at its subsequent Steering Group meeting.
Background
Researchers and authors working in the field of child protection in sport have increasingly noticed that their original ideas and texts are being used without either permission or citation. Some examples include:
- governing bodies using sections of someone else's text in their own safeguarding policies
- governing bodies using the NSPCC and CPSU logos on their materials
- the CPSU itself quoting from or paraphrasing research texts and documents
- students downloading/copying electronic material for use in assignments and presentations
These are breaches of intellectual property rights. At best they are inadvertent mistakes. At worst they constitute plagiarism and detract from the income of self-employed authors, trainers and consultants and/or might lead to legal action from publishers. Authorship rights are moral; copyright is financial, and both are protected by law.
Proposed action
Any agency using images or material written by or belonging to or derived from another individual or agency should seek written permission before printing or presenting it in a public form (in documents, websites or presentations).
- Where original material is paraphrased or concepts and ideas derived from original research are presented their sources must be properly acknowledged (see below) and the full reference(s) provided.
- Where large sections of material (text, tables, diagrams, figures, checklists) are adopted for policy, training or other purposes then the publisher and author should be approached for prior permission and, if appropriate, a copyright fee paid. In such a case the subsequent printed material should acknowledge this through a form of words such as: Reproduced by kind permission of ... from... (author, date, source, publisher, page refs).
- Agencies or individual authors, researchers or consultants preparing material on the subject of safeguarding in sport, whether published with an ISBN/ISSN number or produced as incidental handout material, should in future always assert their right to authorship and indicate the copyright owner on such materials in order to protect themselves. Without the assertion of authorship anyone else can use the material in their name. Without the statement of copyright, no-one else is obliged to pay a fee for use of the material(s).
- Where an agency, individual author, researcher or consultant does not wish to assert copyright, and is happy to have their materials copied or disseminated without acknowledgement, then this should be made clear by them at the start of any document to avoid any confusion.
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