Short Abstract

We demonstrate how ripple effects mapping as a participatory approach to evaluation, delivers rich and insightful data about a local authority research training programme. Findings reveal intended and unintended impacts on individual skills and organisational research activity.

Description

Background

Local authorities regularly make decisions that impact the determinants of health and subsequently, health inequalities. To ensure that policy and service decisions are optimum, it is important that local authorities access and use the most contemporary and wide-ranging evidence. In response, Blackpool Researching Together co-designed and delivered a research training programme to help build local authority and voluntary sector staff capabilities to use and conduct research. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the intended and unintended outcomes of the research training programme.

Methods

We used ripple effects mapping (REM) as a participatory qualitative approach to evaluation. This interactive session encouraged previous research training participants and facilitators to reflect on how the programme had influenced individual skill development and contributed to changes in research activities and outputs in their respective organisations. All participants and programme facilitators from cohorts 1 and 2 were invited to map outcomes. Two workshops were held in December 2025, allowing 12 months of post-programme outcomes for cohort 1 and six months post-programme outcomes for cohort 2. Cohorts 1 and 2 workshops were held separately. Small group guided discussion and flip charts were used to capture participant insights. Discussions focused on links between actions and impacts, the most and least significant outcomes, and who was impacted. Workshops focused on sense-making, gathering both individual and collaborative insights, resulting in two co-created visual maps. The maps depict a timeline capturing all of the outcomes provided by the participants.

Results

Although formal results not yet available, prior to the study, informal anecdotes suggested that the research training programme was successful in improving the participant’s confidence in research and had positive impacts on career trajectories. At the conference, we will present the results of the REM workshops, including a summary of the intended and unintended outcomes of the programme, and the co-produced visual maps. We will discuss the evaluation’s implications for practice, turning evidence into action.

Conclusion

This presentation will demonstrate how participatory and reflective approaches to evaluation, such as ripple effects mapping, can deliver rich and insightful data that can be translated into practice. Our presentation will demonstrate how participatory methods capture nuanced impact that may otherwise be missed using traditional methods. We will also highlight how REM workshops break help to remove traditional power dynamics on research.