Faye Gracey leads on data linking for research within the Welsh Government and manages the ADR Wales Welsh Government team. In a recent appointment, Faye now sits as a Council Member at the UK Evaluation Society. As it celebrates its 30th anniversary, here Faye talks about her role at the UK Evaluation Society and the increasing value of data linkage in evaluative work.
I will be honest, I first attended a UK Evaluation Society event somewhat reluctantly incentivised by the offer of free food but I’m really glad I did. It was an excellent event, and it inspired my passion to become more involved with evaluation. I’ve since gained more than 20 years’ experience working in evaluation, including working in a private research agency, inspectorate, third sector, the media, and currently as a Senior Principal Research Officer in the civil service leading the Welsh Government ADR Wales team of 25 staff.
Throughout my career I’ve really benefitted from UK Evaluation Society events and materials, and I know lots of other colleagues and partners have too. Their mission statement is closely aligned to my interests as a government analyst. I wanted to give back and support the Society and wider evaluation community – so I was really pleased to be elected as a UK Evaluation Society Council Member last summer.
I’d love to help ADR form greater ties with the UK Evaluation Society. I think linked data analysis could really help improve the robustness of summative evaluations and impact assessments, complementing other research methods.
For example, in Wales we have linked with great success de-identified administrative data on children receiving government-funded childcare with school attainment data. Our analysis found that those with higher attendance tended to meet their expected outcomes in all areas of learning in entry school assessments more often than those with lower levels of attendance. This helped inform the decision to expand early years provision in Wales.
This analysis is one of a number of pieces of work that ADR Wales is carrying out to help evaluate flagship Welsh Government programmes. Our ADR Wales planned programme of work 2022-2026 includes lots of examples; for instance, we will look at respiratory illness in association with the introduction 20mph legislation in Wales and the longer-term impact on health and employment from the basic income for care leavers pilot.
I think every evaluability assessment should consider administrative data research. Of course, it will not always be feasible, but even in these instances there could be opportunities to put privacy notices in place and other arrangements to acquire administrative data to a Trusted Research Environment to open up future linked data analysis.
I hope the platform the Council can provide will help me to shout more loudly about the impact and value of ADR (which I spoke about at the UK Evaluation Society Conference last year, and in Research Matters earlier this year).
I hope to draw on my experience as a Trustee for the Social Research Association (SRA) (2014-2021) as the Society is following a similar period of growth and transition having just secured charitable status. I have helped the SRA with their big birthday plans, and I’m excited to be working with the Society on plans to celebrate their 30th year and to raise awareness and recognition of the importance of evaluation.
If you are not yet a member of the UK Evaluation Society, do visit evaluation.org.uk to see lots of reasons to join.