What were we trying to do?
NIHR ARC-GM prioritises supporting academic careers in the areas of greatest research need and in professions with low research uptake. We host Internships, Pre-doctoral Fellowships, and PhD Fellowships, and offer a range of research training opportunities, mentorship, and links to the Greater Manchester NIHR network.

 

In this project, we aimed to evaluate two of the main academic career development research training opportunities we offer: Internships and Pre-doctoral Fellowships.

 

Our main objectives were to:

 

• Describe the schemes and activities carried out within them, the trainees taking up these opportunities, and the supervisors providing support
• Explore the drivers, barriers and benefits for academic and system partners
• Demonstrate the impact and outputs of the programme.

 

 

Why was this important?
Including capacity building in our programme of work was important to make sure the field of applied health and care research is expanding, especially among professions that may not traditionally be involved in health research. 

 

 

How did we do it?
Data were collected in spring and summer 2024, with analysis taking place in parallel. 

 

As part of our data collection, we completed the following activities:

 

1. Described the characteristics of the trainees, supervisors, activity and outputs in relation to each of the training opportunities.
2. A qualitative process evaluation of the programme assessing facilitators, barriers, impact and sustainability.

 

The findings relating to activity 2 above were presented at the Health Services Research UK (HSRUK) conference in Newcastle in July 2025 and will be more widely disseminated at future conferences and events, as well as through a published paper. 

 

 

Findings

Some of the key findings are available in the HSRUK 2025 conference poster:

 

 

 

More information

 

 

Programme Manager
Dr Ross Atkinson
ross.atkinson@manchester.ac.uk