HOST Policy Research: Our Services
Qualitative Research
HOST is able to offer a full range of qualitative research services. These include:
- Individual telephone interviews with learners/beneficiaries, employers, training providers, stakeholders, etc. For some projects it is appropriate for these interviews to be conducted by professional members of the HOST team, but for large-scale telephone interviewing we use our survey partner Telephone Surveys Limited.
- Face-to-face interviews with learners/beneficiaries, employers, training providers, stakeholders, etc. These are conducted by professional members of HOST team following an interview checklist devised by the HOST and approved by the client to ensure consistency and quality control.
- Focus group discussions with a range of participants, ranging from school support staff to ex-offenders, from apprentices to employing organisations. Sometimes these focus group discussions can be added on to an existing gathering of the target group, such as a steering group or board meeting.
- Case studies comprising a mix of interview, focus group and desk research. These can be quite small ‘snapshot’ case studies to full case study activities that take several days. HOST has developed a way of presenting case study information in the form of comparative matrices to aid the reader in extracting key findings. Case studies are usually cleared with the lead interviewer for factual accuracy before being submitted to clients. If the case study will be named, HOST’s procedure for validation and clearance prior to publication is rigorous. Case studies are used to illustrate key findings from research and evaluation projects but can also be presented as stand-alone reports for dissemination purposes or as illustrations in good practice guides arising from research projects, as with our recent work in West Yorkshire in ‘Best Practice in Tackling NEETs’.