Vitae researcher development conference 2009: realising the potential of researchers 08 September 2009 - 09 September 2009

Details

Day

Day 2

Session

C

Start time

11.00

Strand

Postgraduate Researcher (practice)

Code

C3

Presenters

Ms Bridget Juniper - Director, Work and Well-being Ltd
Ms Elaine Walsh - Senior Lecturer, Imperial College London

Workshop outline

Research has shown that the well-being of employees is critical to the performance of both the individual and their organisation. However, no-one has thoroughly assessed the factors affecting the well-being of doctoral researchers. All the investment going into transferable skills development programmes will not yield optimum results if researchers are adversely affected by well-being issues that are neither understood nor quantified adequately. This led us to develop an innovative well-being assessment, specifically for postgraduate researchers, based on a clinically approved methodology and including a wide consultation amongst stakeholders. Having had an excellent student response, we have captured, quantified and ranked the key issues at play and thus been able to put in place a comprehensive evidence-based strategy to better support early career researchers' development.

Topics covered

• the development of the well-being assessment
• running the assessment and achieving a good response rate (close to 50%)
• what we learnt about the well-being of our postgraduate researchers.
• developing an action plan to act upon the results to improve support for researchers • Implementation update - progress and outstanding issues
  

Workshop outcomes

Participants will

• hear about a robust methodology for assessing the well-being of postgraduate researchers
• develop a thorough insight into the well-being issues that affect researchers and their experience
• discuss approaches to developing a strategy to drive change
• hear about current progress with different stakeholders
• Compare with their own experiences and clarify best practice

Format

Information, interaction and discussion. Participants with experience of following up on other survey results such as PRES and CROS will have much to share, as well as those with an interest in well-being issues.