Funding to explore the barriers, motivators, and enablers to engaging beyond academia

What can the funding be used for?

The funding can be used to support running a focus group of approximately 2 hours (including a break) for up to 30 PGRs and ECRs from across a range of disciplines, in groups of no more than 10. This may include:

• Room hire 

• Refreshments 

• Equipment hire (e.g. dictaphones) 

• Staff time (e.g. researcher/ facilitators and note takers, if employed specifically to support the focus group) 

• Reasonable travel expenses for any participants whose normal place of work or study is not the university hosting the focus group (in line with usual institutional policies) 

• Incentives (ie vouchers) for PGR participants  

Awardees will be able to utilise the opportunity of having convened the focus group to use a section of the session to ask any additional questions of participants that would be useful in their own contexts. The DBAA project does not require this data, and so it should be recorded separately and participants should be informed that this data is not being collected on behalf of the DBAA project. If this data is to be used for research purposes, awardees will need to obtain ethics approval from their own institution.

Who can apply?

Academics, researcher developers and professional services teams supporting doctoral and early-career researchers, who are based at HE institutions in England eligible to receive Research England funding, are invited to apply.   

Networks and consortia can support applications to run focus groups across a range of different HEIs, but each individual focus group must relate to a single HEI so that the data is institution-specific.   

Please detail in your application how you will advertise and recruit to your focus group, who will facilitate it, and where it will be hosted. We would also like to understand your own motivations for holding a focus group in your institution, and how you think the data gathered would help to diversify our evidence base. 

How to apply

Please complete our Online Application Form by Friday, 30th May 2025 at 12.00pm. 

The application questions for this fund are available online and as a PDF here, but we ask that the applications are submitted via our Online Form. If you need this form in any other format, please email DBAA@exeter.ac.uk and we’ll do our best to help.

Selection Criteria

The selection panel will award funding based on the following standardised selection criteria: 

• Overall credibility that the proposal will deliver on the objectives of the call, demonstrated via a robust plan to market, recruit to, and run the focus group. 

• Suitability of the proposed host institution to broaden our evidence base due to its geographical location, type, and/or size. 

Applications will also be reviewed against University of Exeter’s EDI and related policies, (available here), to ensure that the awards and subsequent research activities are free from unfair discrimination. 

Any questions?

Please read our FAQs and/or get in touch with the team on DBAA@exeter.ac.uk.