Creating Hope Together - resources
This page hosts resources for groups participating in the Creating Hope Together community-led action research programme, which is providing 4 community groups in Scotland with training and mentoring support in order to plan, carry out and use research into suicide prevention.
Creating Hope Together is the name of the Scottish Government’s suicide prevention strategy 2022-2032 which is funding this programme. The support for groups on the programme is being provided by Scottish Community Development Centre.
The resources and links below aim to provide step-by-step guides to carrying out your research.
Resources
Getting started
Slides presented at the face-to-face training session in October 2024, including an introduction to community-led action research, examples, first person inquiry, an overview of different methods, a guide to quetionnaires and an introduction to ethics. Download slides as a pdf
A timeline for Creating Hope Together. If you open this up as a powerpoint slideshow then you can view the different elements of the programme one-by-one. Download Powerpoint slide
The ‘working agreement’ which we came up with together at the face-to-face training session in October 2024. This consists of some simple statements of how we would like to work together, and what we expect of ourselves and others in relation to how we treat each other. To be added.
Planning and research questions
Template for planning your research. Download (Word document)
Guide to coming up with a good research question. Download (Word document)
More resources
Knowledge is Power toolkit, planning your research page. Visit resource (external website)
Ethics and wellbeing
Introduction to ethics in research. Download (Word document)
Guide to wellbeing Download resource (Word document)
A guide to lone-working if you are planning on any one-to-one meetings or interviews in the community. Download resource (Word document)
If you’re plannning on using digital or online methods, see this guide to online ethics and safety. Download resource (Word document)
Informed consent
The above guide to ethics is a good start for explaining what informed consent is and what you need to do to ensure anonymity and confidentiality.
Research information template for face-to-face in-depth interviews. Download resource (Word document)
Note - the above resource could also be adapted for focus groups
Research information template for surveys. Download resource (Word document)
Consent form template for face-to-face in-depth interviews. Download resource (Word document)
Consent form template for focus groups. Download resource (Word document)
More resources
Knowledge is Power toolkit, ethics guidance. Visit resource (external website)
Research methods and data collection
To start with, please see the above section on ethics and wellbeing as it’s important to stay safe and to avoid harming others in any way. The templates for informed consent will also be useful before you go out and start collecting data.
For guides to all kinds of research methods you can use, from surveys and interviews to more creative and digital methods, please see the Knowledge is Power toolkit methods section. Visit resource (external website) (Knowledge is Power was a project supporting community research in Scotland which Scottish Community Development Centre delivered in partnership with the Poverty Alliance)
Data analysis
Slides from analysis training, focused on analysing qualitative data such as interviews. Download as pdf (with notes) or as pdf (without notes but with bigger slides)
Qualitative analysis
Guide to analysing interview data (useful for focus groups too). Download resource (word document)
Template for a simple table to begin identifying themes and gathering examples. Download resource (Word document)
Quantitative analysis
Tips for survey analysis. Download resource (word document)
Step by step video from Commnity Participatory Action Research (CPAR) programme on how to set up an Excel spreadsheet to enter your survey responses
CPAR Step by step video on how to generate pivot tables and charts using Excel
Note: SCDC delivers the CPAR programme in partnership with University of Reading and Institute for Voluntary Action. CPAR is funded by Workforce, Training & Education (WT&E) NHS England – South East
More resources
Action Research by, in and for Communities (ARC) (external website with download available)
The above resource was developed by Scottish Community Development Centre, and has a section on making sense of your findings
Key findings and presentation
Writing your report - template and guidance (Download as word document)
A report is one way to present your findings, but there are other ways to use your evidence to influence services. See the Knowledge is Power toolkit for some more resources on this (external website)
Examples
Moray Wellbeing Hub developed leaflets and a short animated video highlighting and promoting neurodiversity, which was the topic of their research in the Knowledge is Power programme.
The Jacquah Health Foundation, an organisation SCDC supported in England through the Community Participatory Action Research (CPAR) programme produced a research poster. This one is quite academic, which can be good, although a poster could be done in a more fun and informal way depending on the audience.
For more traditional reports, there are loads of examples from our CPAR programme (year 1 or year 2) and from our Knowledge is Power programme learning page (don’t try and use the overall learning report though - that one was a report for the whole programme!)
One of the CPAR groups, Oxford Community Action, also did a video along with their report.
Action
We’ll add some resources around action, but for some initial ideas, visit the ‘Action’ section of Knowledge is Power, which is a Scottish programme of support for community-led action research delivered by Scottish Community Development Centre in partnership with the Poverty Alliance. Visit resource (external website)