For impact to be maximised, it must be inclusive. Creating a fair culture, where everyone can contribute, participate and feel valued and respected, is a priority at St Andrews. To this end, the Research Impact Team have embedded EDI into their processes, to promote equality, diversity and inclusion in the work that we do and the impact project funds we manage.
EDI policies are part of the University, as well as UKRI, and so we implement reflexive practice to ensure impact is an inclusive aspect of academic life and representative of our unique and diverse working culture.
As part of these processes, we collect EDI quantitative data from applicants to our internally administered funds. This is gathered via anonymised Qualtrics surveys and measures multiple characteristics including: age, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities and carer status. We also ask which funding stream has been applied for, to ensure each stream has fair practice.
Once the funding call’s peer-review process is complete, we compare the dataset of successful applicants with the overall applicant group data.
We do not use the data to identify individuals, but it is important to us that we understand if there are barriers to inclusion for any demographic group compared to another. We also supply anonymised EDI data to external funders as part of our reporting process and internal due diligence. In these ways, data from the group will be used to report on our applicant statistics, not data from individuals.
As part of our application process, we also ask PIs to report any support needs their project may have regarding EDI. For example, resources on inclusive recruitment, or training needs. This also gives projects the opportunity to record good practice which they have incorporated into their proposed work.
If you have any questions or suggestions to make our processes or data collection more inclusive, please contact the Research Impact Team at [email protected].
To learn more about EDI at St Andrews, click here.