RAND Europe Research
Through objective analysis and research RAND Europe strives to provide effective solutions and informed choices to policy and decision-makers. Our international expertise complements the multidisciplinary nature of our research teams.
By establishing new angles of enquiry and, in some cases, new methodologies for research, RAND Europe brings fresh approaches and adds valuable contributions to traditional as well as new RAND research areas. Specific areas of research for RAND Europe include:
More »Current Projects
The Impact and Value of Arts and Humanities Research at Cambridge University
A project for the University of Cambridge and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to assess the impact of arts and humanities research activities at the University of Cambridge. The project is designed to test how the impacts (e.g. social, cultural, political and educational, as well as economic) of arts and humanities research can most appropriately be assessed. The method attempts to go beyond immediate and easily measured effects. The project methods could subsequently be used to assess AHRC-sponsored arts and humanities research elsewhere.
Higher Education Funding Council for England's Research Excellence Framework
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) commissioned
RAND Europe to review approaches to evaluating the impact of research as
part of their wider work programme to develop new arrangements for the
assessment and funding of research - referred to as the Research
Excellence Framework (REF). The objectives of the project are: to review international practice in assessing research impact; and to identify relevant challenges, lessons and observations from international practice that help HEFCE develop a framework for assessing research impact.
More »Completed Research
Assessing Impacts and Outcomes of Regulatory Services — 30 October 2009
Local Authority Regulatory Services are under increasing pressures to demonstrate how they contribute to safe, sustainable and cohesive local communities. RAND Europe now provides a new step by step guide on how to assess the impacts and outcomes of LARS operations, and how to display the resulting information. The toolkit is based on RAND Europe research analysing the current use of such data by local authorities in England and Wales. Both the toolkit and the final research report have now been published by the Local Better Regulation Office (LBRO) which commissioned this research.
Full Document (www.lbro.org.uk)
Evaluating Grant Peer Review in the Health Sciences: A Review of the Literature — 31 August 2009
More than 95 percent of the £2 billion of public funding for medical research each year in the UK is allocated by peer review. Long viewed as a respected process of quality assurance for research, grant peer review has lately been criticised by a growing number of people as inefficient and structuraly flawed. This report presents the findings of a wide-ranging literature review to evaluate these criticisms and a short discussion of simple modifications that might help to address some of them.
Full Document
Room for improvement: Strong patient safety systems could limit health, social and economic harms from medical error - 20092009-09-22 06:36:00
Full Document
Care to Care?: Assessing the challenges of integrating migrant women into Europe's labour force - 20092009-06-10 07:34:00
Full Document
Embracing the future: Embedding digital repositories in higher education institutions - 20092009-02-10 06:00:00
Full Document