The CPAR (Community Participatory Action Research) programme provides community groups in the South East of England with training and mentoring support in order to plan, carry out and use research for the benefit of their community. CPAR resources should be useful for anyone interested in carrying out their own research.

Contribution analysis is a way to show the impact or progress of an activity or piece of work by focusing on how things that are more easy to measure ‘contribute’ to longer term, or higher-level outcomes.

Understanding Scottish Places is an online tool that helps you to better understand and compare the places where you work and live. Just type the name of any town in Scotland into the search bar to get started.

Open Data Scotland acts as a central hub for finding open data from all around Scotland, including in your local area. From here you can find local data relating to everything from more important issues such as air quality management and community council boundaries to the more trivial such as baby first names.

The SIMD is a way of helping understand and find which areas in Scotland are ‘deprived’. It could be useful if you want to understand more about the profile of neighbourhoods in your area and where services could be targeted, or if you need to show data relating to poverty and inequality in your community, such as for a funding application.

The CHEX briefing puts the onus on statutory organisations and funders to unravel their old ways of working with and thinking about evidence so that they can make better use of evidence from communities and third sector and community organisations. It contains some mini case studies and could be useful for community groups thinking about how they evidence their own work.

Through the Ideas Fund, community groups can apply for Community Grants to work with researchers to explore issues important to them.

Community Knowledge Matters is a network bringing together people interested in community-led research shaping practice & policy change in mental health and wellbeing in the Highlands & Islands and beyond. 

Support is available to help voluntary and community organisations to collect and use statistical data, including from the Royal Statistical Society and the Scottish Government.

Knowledge is Power is a programme to support community-led action research. It provides a toolkit with guides, methods and ideas to support community groups to carry out and use their own research.