18/12/08
Research Assessment Exercise results
The results of a UK-wide research quality survey published today show that research in the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences and its parent universities has international impact and is, in some cases, world leading.
According to the results of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008, 70% of our research is of international quality in terms of originality, significance and rigour, and of that, 15% is world leading. This gives us a ranking of second place among those universities in London that submitted to the Nursing and Midwifery Panel of RAE 2008.
Research in the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences has evolved in new directions since the previous RAE in 2001. Our submission to the Nursing and Midwifery Panel of RAE 2008, made as a joint submission by Kingston University and St George’s, University of London, focused on the following key areas of research activity:
Ageing and the care of older people
Including work on: the experiences of older people in residential care; the social meanings of falls risk; and the implications for evaluations of new roles in care settings for older people, such as intermediate care and pre-hospital care.
Interprofessional working and service user and carer involvement
Here, health service users and their informal carers are recognised as members of the team rather than passive recipients of care. Areas of work under this theme include: problem solving and new technological interventions to support carers; user involvement in research; and interprofessional working and new methodologies.
Professional ethics
Work in this area includes: the increasingly important field of clinical ethics; substantial work on issues surrounding dignity in patient care; research ethics; and the more general application of virtue ethics in healthcare practice.
All of these areas come together under our emerging new programme of work around health policy and workforce development.
In addition, research submissions for Faculty staff were also made to two further RAE panels: Epidemiology and Public Health through St George’s, University of London, and Allied Health Professions and Studies with Kingston University.
About the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
The RAE is an assessment of research quality in higher education. It is conducted jointly by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland (DEL).
Research Assessment Exercises have previously been held in the UK in 1986, 1989, 1992, 1996 and 2001.
The assessment process takes into account a range of measures including the number of research active staff, research outputs, research students and studentships, external research income, research structure and strategies, and indicators of esteem.
Research Assessment Exercise 2008
The RAE 2008 measures universities' research performance from 1 January 2001 to 31 October 2007.
Ratings of research quality are expressed on a five-point scale:
4* Quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
3* Quality that is internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour but which nonetheless falls short of the highest standards of excellence.
2* Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
1* Quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
u/c Quality that falls below the standard of nationally recognised work.
The results of the RAE 2008 will be used to determine how more than £1.5 billion per year will be allocated in research grants to UK universities from 2009/10 onwards.
