What are community studies?

Third Sector Trends in England and Wales 2022: Full suite of reports

Published: 2023

Third Sector Trends has been running since 2008. The study has been surveying the sector every three years since 2010 and as such is the largest survey of the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector in England and Wales.

In 2022, 6,071 responses were received across England and Wales (an average of ~600 responses in each region). Des…

Valuing and enabling citizen science: Lessons from the Citizen Science Exploration Grant programme

Published: 2022

In 2019, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded 28 Citizen Science Exploration Grant projects. This was part of its ongoing work to explore how researchers can work with diverse groups to participate with, and collaborate in, the research and innovation process – and to test opportunities for building citizen science methodologies into resear…

Better understanding the financial impact of funding programmes through the ‘Year Zero’ approach

Published: 2022

Through funding programmes such as Trade Up and the Community Business Fund, Power to Change supports community businesses to trade for the benefit of their local community; yet how can we understand the financial impact that Power to Change has had on community businesses? The answer is not straightforward, and programme impact can be difficul…

Good Evidence: A guide to help community organisations produce research that gets taken seriously

Published: 2022

This guide is for community organisations undertaking their own research or doing research in partnership with other institutions. It has been informed by consultation with members of the Greater Manchester Third Sector Research Network.

Part I comprises three short sections on Trustworthiness, followed by Ethics and Bias, which are c…

The Green Book: Annex A2 – Place Based Analysis

Published: 2020

The Green Book is guidance issued by HM Treasury on how to appraise policies, programmes and projects. It also provides guidance on the design and use of monitoring and evaluation before, during and after implementation. Appraisal of alternative policy options is an inseparable part of detailed policy development and design. This guidance conce…

Researching community responses to COVID-19: a methodological note

Published: 2020

Local Trust commissioned a team of researchers, led by the Third Sector Research Centre, to undertake a study exploring how communities react to, cope with and recover from COVID-19. The aim of the study is to learn, in real time, how different communities have and are responding to the impact of COVID-19, how they make this happen and how they…

Participatory Action Research Toolkit: An Introduction to Using PAR as an Approach to Learning, Research and Action

Published: 2019

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is collaborative research, education and action used to gather information to use for change on social or environmental issues. It involves people who are concerned about or affected by an issue taking a leading role in producing and using knowledge about it.

Many names are now used to describe research proc…

Re-thinking the English indices of multiple deprivation: A review and exploration of alternative and complementary area-based indicator systems

Published: 2018

Power to Change commissioned the Bristol Centre for Economics and Finance (BCEF) of the University of the West of England (UWE) to review what insights on disadvantage the current English IMD offers, how these insights fit with the Power to Change mission, and ‘good practice’ in filling the gaps between the insights of the existing IMD and …

Social Network Analysis: ‘How to guide’

Published: 2016

The aim of social network analysis is to understand a community by mapping the relationships that connect them as a network, and then trying to draw out key individuals, groups within the network (‘components’), and/or associations between the individuals.

This guide is intended to help local areas and police forces use intelligence d…