The aim of the National Centre’s Research Plan is to build an accessible and robust evidence base that contributes to addressing our seven key challenges and supports our organisational goals.
To achieve this, we will pursue four interrelated objectives:
All research conducted or commissioned by the National Centre will be guided by five key principles.
Our research will be:
- Participatory and collaborative
- Development, trauma and healing informed
- Inclusive and culturally-safe
- Rigorous and ethical
- Relevant and translational
The National Centre adopts a broad definition of research to include all systematic investigations undertaken to gain knowledge and understanding, including evaluations and quality improvement activities.
Evaluation refers to the systematic collection and analysis of qualitative and/or quantitative information to assess the effectiveness, efficiency and/or appropriateness of an activity or the implementation of an activity. Quality assurance or improvement is an activity that seeks to monitor or improve the quality of a service.
Commissioned research
Research projects commissioned by the National Centre are identified through a competitive funding round that consist of:
- widely disseminated request for applications
- a range of short and longer-term projects aligned with the National Centre’s priorities
- merit based selection by independent multi-disciplinary peer assessment panel(s) against specific selection criteria.
In accordance with the National Centre’s commitment to funding projects that go beyond the creation of new knowledge to include the implementation of practice improvement, capability building and the development of partnerships that can drive change, the open competitive grants rounds consist of two streams: research and quality improvement.
