Outreach Metric Project Member Survey Results

Thank you to everyone who participated in the recent member survey exploring the extent to which a student is likely to have self-selected to participate in outreach activities.

Understanding how and why students participate in activities is essential for interpreting progression outcomes and ensuring fair comparisons across regions, student groups and/or by provider. For example, are students volunteering because they are already motivated, or are schools selecting participants based on need? To investigate this for the Outreach Metric project, which aims to understand the relationship between outreach participation and progression outcomes, we asked members to share how they identify and recruit participants.

Survey Methodology

Feedback from the HEAT Research group and Outreach Metric Steering Group highlighted the complexity of this topic and the challenges of understanding selection effects. We heard that the picture is often mixed and that respondents had to generalise in order to choose responses to questions. That said, we had a healthy response, and your contribution will be used to increase our understanding the randomisation (or not) of individual participation in outreach.

 61 organisations responded giving insights into the Questions posed:

• What kinds of targeting criteria are you most likely to apply to outreach activities? School, Class or Individual?
• Who decides whether a learner gets to participate in outreach activities? Individuals, Teachers or Someone Else?
• If outreach activities are typically oversubscribed, how do you decide who gets to participate? First come, first served; Most disadvantaged prioritised or Random?

We also asked respondents to consider each Question for the key activity types and Pre/Post 16 groups. Given that our Outreach Metric Project cohort will span a long timeline (KS4 2014-15 to 2019-20). we also asked organisations if their approach had changed over the last ten years.

Summary of Results

The following paper gives a brief summary of responses by question and type of HEAT member, illustrating that teachers are by far the key influencers and decision makers regarding individual participation.

Providers were able to say that:

• In general, individual students were more likely to self-select to participate in Summer Schools (Pre and Post 16) and Mentoring (Post 16). However, teachers were reported as key decision makers in all other types of activity.
• We also heard that more often than not, providers don’t know whether self selection has taken place.
• Providers reminded us that individual de-selection can take place.