Faculty of Social Sciences news

Alice Banfield (far left) partners with local businesses and charities to develop communications & services through community research and participatory insight work for Wild Purpose.

Alice's presentation was well received by Politics Research Skills & Methods students who learned real-world applications of the research skills they are learning.

As part of the University’s “embedding employability” initiative, the Department of Politics invited Alice Banfield - researcher, facilitator, collaborator and co-Founder of Wild Purpose - to share her real-world, professional research experience with undergraduate Year 1 ‘Research Skills and Methods’ module students to highlight the practical relevance of research methods training beyond their degrees.

With a particular passion for youth research, Alice has almost 20-years’ experience working for various market and social research agencies across a number of industries, including retail, technology, finance, utilities, government and charities. Currently an independent consultant, Alice works with research/communications agencies and oversees business projects.

Alice presented and described three case studies to demonstrate how research skills were required and utilised to address them:

1. Demonstrate how relevant US-based content is for young people in the UK for Kooth, the UK’s largest and longest established digital mental health service.
Solution: A qualitative online forum captured the views of 40 young people of different ages and from different areas of the UK which were then analysed by theme. This gave the client a good idea of which US content best resonates and engages UK youth and therefore which content in the UK version of their app to develop or remove.

2. Design a travel alert notification app for Booking.com which is relevant to the consumer and easy to use.
Solution: Through 20 online individual usability interviews, participants were asked to complete a series of activities using a prototype app and subsequently answered questions which were analysed by theme. The results enabled the client to understand the prototype app’s effectiveness and ease of functionality in order to develop and optimize the final app prior to launch.

3. Health insurance provider, Simplyhealth, wanted a better idea of who their customers were, their key characteristics and behaviours.
Solution: Data was collected via an online quantitative survey of 2000 Simplyhealth customers. Data was organised by groups and subgroups and analysed. Over/under indexing was also used to show group differences. The client was subsequently better able to tailor their marketing campaigns and improve the customer experience to increase sales and profitability.

Dr Rekha Diwakar, Associate Professor in Politics and convenor of the Research Skills and Methods module, said:

“Alice gave our students a really good insight into the use of quantitative and qualitative methods in helping solve real world business problems. Her talk was well received by Politics Research Skills and Methods students who appreciated what they could see were very practical applications of the skills they are learning from this module and the significance of research methods training.”

The Politics department now offers an internship with Wild Purpose as part of its internship programme for final‑year students which includes 18 internships delivered in collaboration with 16 external partners. 

Professor Aleks Szczerbiak, Head of the Department of Politics, said:

"At Sussex we have a highly career and skills-focused Politics degree. Embedding employability into our modules - as Rekha has so effectively with Research Skills and Methods - aligns with our dedicated careers and employability lecturer, our 'Sussex Success Stories' alumni career talks, and an internship programme that is actually embedded within Politics degrees rather than an-add on.

"Preparing out students for the world of work and their future careers is at the heart of everything we do in the Sussex Politics department."

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