The Manchester Metropolitan University Q-Step Centre are regularly involved in community research projects. This research looks to build on current knowledge to develop new strategies that will empower and transform communities.

Downloadable Reports:

• The Men's Room
  An Exploratory Study of the Growth of Online Male Sex Work in Manchester (April 2016)

• Narratives of Need 
  Exploring the Barriers to Help-Seeking in Undergraduate Students (April 2016)

• Saving Lives with Advice
  The Impact of Advice on the Health and Wellbeing of Citizens Advice Manchester clients (September 2015)

• Fathers Against Violence
  This was a student-led evaluation of the impact of Fathers Against Violence (March 2017).
  
  
• An Invisible Workforce‌
  Its aim is to explore and identify the wellbeing needs of female online sex workers (June 2017)

Other Research:

• Manchester Action on Street Health

  An Investigation into the Support Needs of Online Sex Workers. This is a mixed methods piece of research due to be completed by May 2017.

• Faculty Festival

  This was a student-led piece of research evaluating the Arts and Humanities Faculty Festival.

• Putting it out there

  Engaging Young People with Maths and Numbers Through Football. Putting it out there was part of the ERSR Festival of Social Science where a package of statistics related activates were developed and rolled out at the National Football Museum. (November 2016) - http://www.esrcmanchesterfest.ac.uk/events/engaging-young-people-numbers/

• Putting it out there (ii) - Fun activities with football and numbers at the National Football Museum. This project develops from the ‘Putting it out there’ activates and targets widening participation students to support their engagement with numbers and statistics (end July 2017).

• Nuffield Research Placements - This year MMU Q-Step centre will be hosting four A-level students during the summer as part of the Nuffield Foundation Research Placement programme. This national programme places A-level students in diverse settings, commercial and academic, in order to gain experience of working on research projects, specifically involving STEM skills. Our four students will be working alongside academics and PHD students on real-world projects: culminating in a bespoke report. This is a prestigious and highly competitive scheme and we are proud to be a part of it.

• Numeracy Project - MMU is one of only a small number of universities to provide campus-wide, joined-up support with numeracy and maths. The MMU Q-Step centre delivers this support on behalf of the university. We support students across all levels and disciplines via the Numeracy Project; this project is led by students who deliver peer assisted support through pop-up Maths cafes and in-class sessions. We train the students, who we call Data Buddies and they provide exceptional support. This year we are working in partnership with National Numeracy, the UK only Numeracy charity, to further develop our support to students.

• Everybody Counts! - In the UK, one in four adults has low-level numeracy skills and this is a barrier to socio-economic success. Therefore we are engaged in a number of projects that deliver numeracy awareness and training to service users within many of our Q-Step in the Community partners; this is something we seek to expand further.