CUREE’s approach to quality assurance is embedded in the way we manage projects. There are three key elements:
- developing benchmarks by clarifying and agreeing outcomes at an early stage and matching outputs to the agreed specification as they are developed
- drawing together all the personnel involved in a particular project or part of a project to develop shared understanding of key concepts, instruments, calibration mechanisms and targeted outputs
- a continuous process of quality improvement based on feedback obtained on products and processes both during their development and on completion.
We believe that it is important to design quality assurance into the development process, rather than simply to inspect quality on completion of outputs – although we do this rigorously too. This enables us to continuously refine quality during the development process, rather than trying to make changes when work has been completed.
CUREE has a strong reputation for systematically reviewing and appraising evidence to ensure that it is useful, robust and offers an appropriate springboard for drawing legitimate conclusions based on sound evidence. Wherever possible, data collected will be triangulated with data from other sources, particularly where the evidence obtained relates to participant and provider perceptions as these can be very subjective and not necessarily closely related to impact.