Research & evaluation

People & Work was founded in 1984 to undertake applied research to help people cope with the economic and social impacts of the closure of heavy industry in the South Wales valleys. Since then, research and evaluation for the public and voluntary sectors has been integral to our work.

People and Work delivers a range of research services to our public and voluntary sectors clients including:

• research to better understand people’s lives, aspirations and choices;
• options appraisal and feasibility studies to assess the likely cost-effectiveness of projects and programmes;
• programme and project evaluations, to explore design, implementation and impact, in order to inform practice and provide accountability; and
• organisational reviews in order to review and improve performance now and in the future.

We offer expertise in quantitative and qualitative research and analysis, and primary and secondary research, including interviews, focus groups, surveys, systematic literature reviews and quantitative data analysis. We work throughout Wales and Europe.

Much of our work is inter-sectoral, focused upon different stages of the life course (covering childhood to old age), different policy areas (including most notably education, health and social policy), different types of organisation, policy and programme (ranging from the local to European) and different groups (including different ethnic and linguistic groups, different genders and disabled people). The golden thread running throughout our work, is our commitment to make change for the better possible.