Professors Catherine De Vries and Raymond Duch to participate in Cross-Government Trial Advice Panel

For the first time, the Government is assembling a group of top trialling experts from academia, including the department’s Catherine De Vries and Raymond Duch, who, together with a team of Government representatives, will support civil servants design and implement effective trials.  The aim of this Panel is to support trialling and experimentation and ultimately improve the effectiveness of Government policies.

Specifically, it is to:

• Provide an expert advice service to all civil servants on designing and implementing trials that can help us better understand whether interventions (or variations within an intervention) are effective.
• Increase the number of high quality trials taking place across Government both:

1. 1. as part of new policies, programmes and interventions and
   2. as improvements to existing policies, programmes and interventions.

• Increase skills and awareness across the civil service in understanding the value of experimental and quasi-experimental methods, and how to deliver high quality trials.

Professor Duch commented on the initiative, saying "I am delighted that the University will be participating in the Panel.  This is a unique opportunity for members of the University of Oxford scholarly community to share their experimental expertise with the Government and contribute to the design of high quality policy trials."

Catherine De Vries and Raymond Duch will be joined by Professor Paul Montgomery of Oxford’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention. Their participation in the Panel will be funded by an ESRC Impact Acceleration Account award.