Maritime Research
For more information on our unique maritime research experience, do what dolphins do, and click here.
Research into training
Education & Training
We’ve worked with commercial and government education provider organisations for over a decade, including the biggest names in training.
National Council for Vocational Training - we assessed training providers’ own views of their training needs and requirements in a comprehensive review of the Top 100 NVQ courses.
Learning+Skills Council - In a huge aspirations, needs and requirements study including hundreds of quantitative interviews, face-to-face interviews and group discussions with training providers, employers, trainees and young people excluded from education and training (NEETS), the project input directly into the Tomlinson Report, the largest-ever assessment of vocational training;
Investors In People, where we provided the majority of the data for the Beaumont Report, using a quantitative questionnaire administered to hundreds of people in training;
QA, the longest-established IT training company in the UK, for whom we identified the difference between the behaviours of the people who trained on their courses and the people who paid the bills for the training. Focussing on these differences and adapting their marketing to suit specific stakeholder needs allowed QA to increase their prices and profitability at a time when the competition were discounting.
Training into research
In November 2008 we were invited to present a short series of lectures to graduate and post-graduate Human Elements students at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. Among other things, Chalmers developed the Volvo crash-test dummies and is renowned for research into technology, industrial science and social structures and Human Elements, the interface between humans and machines.
The lectures addressed two major current research concerns that are vital for any effective research programme:
Real-World Data Collection - Planning research is one thing, but real-life constraints can get in the way of theory. The best researchers work with their data-collection departments to consider not only how to get information from the respondents but how to get the respondents in the first place. It isn’t easy. But it is essential if the results are to be accurate and representative.
Subjective Objectivity & The Importance of Base-Line Data - It’s easy to think that words are about emotions and numbers are about facts. But when the facts are records of what people think and the emotional decisions they made, is that subjective information or objective reality? This was no abstract philosophy class, but a major problem in a study of safety inspections we resolved.
Bespoke Research Training Packages
Now GRS are offering training packages to the market research world in our special areas of expertise. One-to-one or one-to-many at your locations. Contact us to find-out more about how your techniques can benefit from our input. Some of our packages include:
Listen Up - Getting the most out of difficult respondents, in business, consumer or education contexts.
Presenting Made Easy - Even expert researchers are sometimes find it hard to present ideas and findings to clients. This session shows how anyone can do it, with a bit of guidance and practice. You know your stuff and this course shows you how to show it.
Making It Real - sampling and proving you are interviewing enough people, including confidence intervals, error and most important of all, justifying sample size.
