Change and the future
In interviews about studies that had been completed some years earlier, participants reflected on changes that might be barriers to similar evaluations in the future. Two themes that
emerged were the growing ‘professionalisation’ of research, and current resource constraints. For some academics, the increasing administrative burden of securing funding for evaluations had replaced what one described as ‘a cottage industry[in which people] weren't as professional as they are now’. The ‘muddling through’ approach, which had been so successful in their particular example, would no longer work in an era where research governance was more onerous: