A working paper examining the findings of four What Works Scotland researchers during a three-year programme to explore collaborative action research with four community planning partnerships.
Blog: Meet the WWS staff, Research Fellows Richard Brunner and Claire Bynner
Mini-biographies of two of the research associates when they started working for What Works Scotland in the case study areas, West Dunbartonshire and Glasgow.
Collaborative dissertations in Thriving Places
Dissertations from University of Glasgow masters students who were enabled by What Works Scotland to conduct their fieldwork in Glasgow’s Thriving Places. This allows interested students to have research impact and for Thriving Places to receive useful evidence to inform future work.
Public service reform and participatory budgeting: How can Scotland learn from international evidence?
A documentary film exploring how community planning partners from two of What Works Scotland case sites learnt about implementing participatory budgeting on a study trip to Paris, European leader in mainstreaming PB.
Evaluating the impact of participatory budgeting
How What Works Scotland and Glasgow community planning partners used a collaborative action research model, to develop an evaluation approach to assess the impact of participatory budgeting activities and a PB evaluation toolkit.
Glasgow’s Participatory Budgeting Evaluation Toolkit
This toolkit was produced by practitioners in Glasgow’s Participatory Budgeting Evaluation Group to assess the impact of PB activities and develop an improvement plan. It is aimed at any organisation or community group in Glasgow leading a PB activity.
Generating case study evidence in Glasgow’s Thriving Places
Practitioners in Glasgow and What Works Scotland worked together to produce these two case studies to present evidence of the work from the city’s Thriving Places. Part of the collaborative action research work between Glasgow Community Planning Partnership and What Works Scotland.
Thriving Places case studies
Two case studies produced by practitioners in Glasgow Community Planning Partnership’s Thriving Places about asset mapping and community consultation processes. Thriving Places is a ten-year commitment from Glasgow CPP to combat inequalities and achieve better outcomes for residents in nine neighbourhoods experiencing high levels of deprivation.
Our approach to collaborative action research

The What Works Scotland approach to collaborative action research and the learning that is emerging from our work in multi-agency, multi-practitioner public service environments.
Evaluability Assessment of Thriving Places: a Report for Glasgow Community Planning Partnership
Report that describes the evaluability assessment (EA) process used by What Works Scotland to develop and recommend options to evaluate the Glasgow area-based initiative Thriving Places.