Lead: Janet Holt, University of Leeds (hcsjh@leeds.ac.uk)

This is an exploratory study of service users and/or carers (SUC) participation in assessment. The overall aim of the project is to explore how SUC can make a meaningful contribution to student assessment. The objectives are:
1.         To investigate how service users and carers can contribute to assessing communication, team working and ethical practice in students,
2.         To examine whether there are variations between the assessments carried out by SUCs and professional assessors in practice.
3.         To explore any similarities and differences in how professional assessors and SUCs approach the assessment process.
Three groups of participants will be recruited:
i) Working through the established SUC networks in the Faculty, a group of SUCs will be recruited and trained to use the assessment tools developed by ALPS to assess students in communication, team working or ethical practice.
ii) A group of students willing to participate in an assessment exercise
iii) Assessors in practice
In a simulated exercise, a student will be assessed by a professional assessor and a SUC participant. The assessors will both complete the same written record of the assessment. Following the assessment, the student and both assessors will be given an opportunity to discuss the process and these discussions will be audio taped and transcribed. Data obtained from the written records will be subjected to descriptive analysis and examined for variance while qualitative data obtained from the post assessment discussion will be analysed using content analysis.