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LEARNING CENTRE

Research and data collection

Research and data collection

At Sundial, our key goal is to deliver high quality educational materials and provide exemplary resources and support for professionals, communities and those at risk of harmful practices. It is important that we remain current in our understanding and underpin our work with robust and accurate information. We pursue an active agenda to reflect on emerging ideas, trends and understanding on harmful practices and make a positive contribution to new thinking. To achieve this, we constantly maintain our knowledge base through

  • Conducting our own quantitative studies and data synthesis activities, including a groundbreaking Healthwatch-funded pilot evaluating feedback on primary care for survivors of FGM, work with men campaigning on FGM  and body image lesson delivery.
  • Drawing on discussions across all our activities, such as web cafes and working groups as a standard part of our evaluation processes. This helps us to identify the emergence of new trends or areas of interest to our communities and stakeholders, with recent topics focusing on social norms linked to ‘honour’ and shame, and ‘honour’-based abuse (HBA) in African communities. 
  • Working alongside others and contributing to progressive research, including a study on engagement with affected communities run by the University of Oxford,  a pilot on prevalance estimation methods for FGM and forced marriage with the University of Birmingham and a study on HBA data collection by the University of Nottingham. We will also provide expertise for a project with the University of Birmingham exploring the use of language on FGM in educational materials.
  • Proactive engagement with current research and the agencies/organisations that produce related statistics and demographic data (e.g. developing relationships with, attending training sessions, etc). These include local authorities, charities at the forefront of data collection such as Karma Nirvana, the Home Office, the NHS, the Office for National Statistics and the Forced Marriage Unit.

We are committed to supporting our sector and moving the agenda forward to provide the best possible data and information. Our contributions include:

  • Maintaining an online resources toolkit to disseminate helpful materials (including some of our own outputs). This can amplify the existing good work of other charities and organisations that focus on ending harmful practices.
  • Feeding into work on standards and practices for collecting relevant data. This involves collaborating with appropriate agencies, organising and running workshops and speaking at conferences to forge relationships and share our learning.

Sundial is always open to opportunities to work with others on these types of activities. Please contact Dr Kate Clayton-Hathway (kate.clayton@sundialcentre.org) to chat about this or any other topic related to research and/or data collection.