Specification

You will need to demonstrate your understanding of the relevance of the MRS Code of Conduct to your work.

You may have had problems to solve which raised ethical issues or you may have been responsible for ensuring compliance with the MRS Code of Conduct. You may have had to intervene to ensure that research was undertaken in accordance with MRS Regulations and guidelines. You may have managed fieldwork involving hard to reach or vulnerable people or on a sensitive topic.

Specification

You may have been involved in a research project which demanded an understanding of the broad political / social / economic / technological context of the research topic or you may have needed to set the findings in one or more of these contexts.

Alternatively, you may have an understanding of the wider issues relating to a specific aspect of the research sector (e.g. field, operations etc.) You may have been responsible for ensuring that interviewers/recruiters or junior research staff understood the wider context of a research project.

Specification

You may have used research results to make recommendations that influence strategic decision-making, for example, in relation to products, services, marketing or planning.

You may direct or play a role in a research business or a division of a larger public or private sector organisation.

Alternatively, you may have managed fieldwork, data processing or operations within an organisation and had to reflect on how it fits into organizational business or culture.

Specification

Experience might include establishing and managing relationships with internal and/or external clients and suppliers; liaising over respondent complaints/queries; discussing fieldwork or data analysis/response rate problems; engaging with clients pre and post fieldwork.

Specification

Experience may include allocation and supervision of people and other resources (e.g. financial, infrastructure, data, technology, panels, fieldwork reports etc) and/or the management of projects.

Specification

You may have given presentations to clients, people in your organisation, suppliers or fieldworkers, or led informal discussions with clients. You may have written project briefs; research summaries; research reports, fieldwork reports or debrief documents; formal conference papers or journal articles or non research papers relating to other issues.

You may have written project briefs; research summaries; research reports or debrief documents; formal conference papers or journal articles or non research papers relating to other issues.

Specification

Though you are not expected to have a detailed knowledge of all research approaches, it is very important that you show an awareness of different methodologies, and demonstrate a broad understanding of when each is best used. Experience might include deciding on appropriate methodologies for particular research projects; balancing the ideal method with pragmatic issues, like budget and time; developing new or adapting existing methods to suit particular circumstances and briefing and debriefing on different methodologies evaluating pitfalls. For those in fieldwork management, experience may include commenting or advising on the viability and/or appropriateness of various methodologies in different circumstances.

Specification

You must demonstrate experience within the project life cycle either as a specialist researcher, a provider of operational resources, a buyer of research or as a manager of research functions including fieldwork and data processing. This may include demonstration of an understanding of the research process at different stages e. g.

• Identification of a problem
• Data Collection
• Data analysis
• Reporting or understanding of a whole project
• Managing the fieldwork for a range of projects

Specification

The specialist area may be broad or narrow and may relate to

• methodology (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, online, etc)
• sector (e.g. automotive, financial, international, public policy,b2b, b2c etc)
• respondent type (e.g. children, seniors, ethnicity,etc)
• management (of operations, fieldwork eg response issues hard to reach respondents, data processing or analysis, etc)
• managing a research business
• purchasing research
• knowledge management

Specification

You need to demonstrate an understanding of the relevance and importance of quality assurance approaches in research.

This is a broad standard, relating to all aspects of quality assurance.

You may have experience of ensuring the quality and integrity of research in your organisation.

You may have experience with some of the formal quality standards, that relate specifically to research quality control (e.g. ISO 20252, ISO 26362, IQCS, etc) or are broader in scope (e.g. ISO 9001) or standards which are internal to your organisation. This might be at the research design, data collection, analysis or reporting stage. Experience might relate either to research or be specific to your work.

You may have had to make judgements about whether research is fit for purpose or make quality-timeliness tradeoffs.

Specification

This can include formal and informal development in a variety of formats, including face to face, written, e-learning, or other IT formats, such as social media, blogs, forums etc: It may relate specifically to research or to broader skills (e.g. management, business, learning on the job, work shadowing etc).

Specification

This can include: managing appraisal and/or development of others; writing articles to benefit others; preparing and delivering conference papers; teaching on and/or leading training events and seminars.