Multi-site trials - FAQs
Below, you can find answers to frequently asked questions on the multi-site trials of practice research
To read answers to clarifying questions submitted to the Centre and raised during September's webinars, click here.
Possibly, but it might be that the mentoring model will have to be adapted, and you will certainly need to recruit ‘new’ young people (that is, young people who have not received mentoring with your organisation before). The research project is structured around all participating organisations following a shared approach to mentoring, agreed at the outset. It will involve agreeing a common approach to matching mentors and young people, for example, and a common frequency for mentoring sessions. We expect that there will be some variations in approaches (for example, the exact length of sessions, and where they take place) but we want to capture these variations and understand the impact on young people. All participating organisations will need to agree to follow a basic common approach, and share information on how they’re following - or not - this model.
Potentially. This depends on how you’re working with these young people, and whether they’re in the right age group. We wouldn’t be able to include young people that you have already been part of a mentoring programme, as we need to gather data from young people at the start of their mentoring relationship with you. However, if you’re already working with young people as part of a universal youth club, or a sport or skill-building project, for example - and they’re 10-14 years old - we may be able to include them in the research project.
No. We envisage working with single organisations through this research project. There may be exceptional circumstances where two smaller organisations may apply in partnership in order to meet the numbers of young people required, but we would need to understand how those two organisations would work together to ensure they followed the practice model and were aligning their work.
Yes, the majority of young people participating in mentoring need to be aged between 10 and 14, but a minority (up to one third) may be aged up to 17.
Yes, all materials required in order to take part in the trials will be available in both English and Welsh.
No. This research is focused on models of mentoring where a trusted adult works one to one with a young person. The research project will not include peer to peer or near-peer mentoring.
The research project will be using common measures, so participating organisations will need to use our outcome surveys/feedback tools - these will be agreed with the delivery partner organisations along with the development of the delivery model. This does not prevent an organisation gathering its own additional data.
Participating organisations will receive a grant of up to £50,000 to support their role in the research project. This will cover the payment (salaried or contracted) of mentors and associated staff, plus the time of the staff team in working with the research team to design the mentoring model and collecting data. Funding will also cover participating organisations’ time in participating in capacity building and support. The funding will be paid in four tranches, which will be contingent on the organisation still being fully able to participate in the research.
We will work closely with delivery organisations to monitor potential challenges to recruitment so that we can talk about how we might address any difficulties as they arise. The research project is reliant on recruiting certain numbers of young people, so we will only be able to retain organisations as part of the project if they are able to recruit. We will review this regularly, and should an organisation have to exit the project, we will support them to do so well.
It’s true that some people do have ethical concerns about doing RCTs with young people. We are comfortable that this study is ethical, one of the main reasons being that all young people will receive mentoring at some point - the first group (intervention group) earlier than the second ‘waiting list’ (control) group. DPOs will also be encouraged to maintain relationships with and offer some form of ongoing support to young people on the waiting list. All the young people involved will need to give informed consent to participate, alongside their parents/carers.
No, all mentors would be paid skilled mentors at the participating organisations. This is because we need to work closely with mentors to understand their practice, and to support them to collect data from the young people. This might be too demanding on the time of volunteers. Given the numbers of young people involved, we also feel that there may be too many volunteers involved in delivery (on the basis that volunteer mentors often work with just one young person) for us to meaningfully understand variations in mentoring practice. We are anticipating working with one or perhaps two mentors at each delivery partner organisation. If you typically work with volunteer mentors, it would not be appropriate for this study to start paying them now.
No, organisations/practitioners need to be experienced mentors in order to participate.
Potentially, assuming the age range is aligned, for example. But the existing funding/project would need to be sufficiently flexible that you could adapt the approach if necessary and accommodate the ‘outcomes of interest’ to the Youth Endowment Fund. It would also be important to consider whether it’s possible to gather the monitoring and evaluation data that might be needed by both funders.
No, the research project is focused on supporting charities and social enterprises to participate in large-scale impact evaluations, and particularly those who would not otherwise have the financial resource or ability to recruit sufficient numbers of young people to do this type of impact evaluation on their own.
See above.
Yes, but we would need to understand how you ‘manage’ mentoring across multiple sites. If the staff are different, and the sites are in very different locations, we may need to consider your delivery sites separately. If the same staff work across more than one site, we may be able to consider your sites as one delivery partner for the purposes of the research study. Organisations that work across more than one site with different staff and in different locations (for example, an office in Nottingham and an office in London) would need to submit more than one expression of interest.