UK SBS FWRECR16018 Export services: Impact and qualitative evaluation

UKTI will appoint professional service designers to design and implement the pilots. The contractors commissioned to evaluate the pilots will be expected to work closely with them and UKTI project leads to inform how the pilots are designed and delivered ideally using RCTs and if not feasible an alternative robust impact evaluation to follow cross government guidance on impact evaluation as set out in the supplementary guidance to the Magenta Book and BIS Guidance on Evaluating the Impact of Interventions on Business .

The specification outlines the requirements for the design, development and delivery of an impact evaluation (ideally through RCT) and a qualitative evaluation (for the intention of informing practical recommendations for implementing best practice and addressing barriers). For this project contractor’s roles include:

• Proposal of a feasible robust impact evaluation ideally through RCT and proposal for qualitative evaluation to run alongside the impact evaluation
• Undertaking impact and qualitative evaluation
• Collect business data to develop robust evidence base for evaluating the RCT/Impact evaluation research questions.
• Collect data on changes in business behaviour and compare it with the baseline data, captured at the application stage for both the treatment and control group
• Collect data on business performance indicators as outlined in the logic model and analyse it over the 6/12/18 month waves of data collection to assess the impact of the programme (logic model to be finalised after contract is awarded).
• Understand the extent of market failures and behavioural constraints related to the use of business advice from the participating businesses.
• Measure direct impact to the business in comparison to what would have happen anyway, without the intervention (counterfactual)
• Benefit cost ratio calculations
• Gauge deadweight (would the outcomes have been achieved without the export service).

We expect to have some comparable measures of outcomes and benefit cost ratios across the pilots.

Contractors need to be mindful of maximising the use of digital data collection techniques for all aspects of the formative and impact evaluation.

A pilot scheme advisory group formed by leading academics will be set up; contractors will be required to present their approaches to this panel for them to make a decision on the most appropriate impact evaluation method. Contractors will be expected to consider and take on board comments made by this advisory group.