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Research

HESA’s core mission is to support the advancement of higher education across all nations of the UK through the data it collects, assures and disseminates.

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Strategy and impact

Our Research strategy describes how we undertake research to advance public knowledge and understanding of UK higher education, and to improve our own outputs in the public interest.

Our review of the Impact of research illustrates how we are meeting those aims and aspirations.

Research topics

The design and nature of work

We use Graduate Outcomes survey data to measure one aspect of job quality.

Getting a move on: The creation of a new graduate mobility marker (2022-11-29)

Graduate wellbeing: How does the design and nature of work relate to life evaluations and present emotions? (2022-10-18)

Looking beyond access: How do graduate perceptions of their work vary by socioeconomic disadvantage? (2022-03-24)

Time to take SOC: Graduate reflections on the design and nature of their work by occupation (2022-03-22)

Regional variation in the design and nature of graduate work: a first look (2021-12-07)

Graduate Outcomes : A statistical measure of the design and nature of work (2021-06-08)

Widening participation

Effective measurement of disadvantage to support the WP agenda.

Using Census data to derive a new area-based measure of deprivation (2022-11-08)

Looking beyond access: How do graduate perceptions of their work vary by socioeconomic disadvantage? (2022-03-24)

Reaching out: The added value of HESA’s new measure of socioeconomic disadvantage (2022-03-15)

Using Census data to generate a UK-wide measure of disadvantage (2021-10-05)

Year 0: A foundation for widening participation? (2019-05-16)

Wellbeing and satisfaction

Analysing graduates' self reported success and subjective wellbeing.

Graduate wellbeing: How does the design and nature of work relate to life evaluations and present emotions? (2022-10-18)

Ready for the weekend? How data relating to the Graduate Outcomes survey process can be used in assessing the validity of subjective wellbeing information (2022-09-21)

Higher education outcomes: How career satisfaction among graduates varies by ethnicity (2020-09-22)

The graduate premium

The changing gap in earnings between graduates and non-graduates.

Graduate Earnings Premia in the UK: Decline and Fall? (2021-11-23)

How does the return to a degree vary by class of award? (2020-03-10)

The return to a degree: New evidence based on the birth cohort studies and the Labour Force Survey (2019-10-22)

Data quality

Coding assurance and statistical weighting.

Ready for the weekend? How data relating to the Graduate Outcomes survey process can be used in assessing the validity of subjective wellbeing information (2022-09-21)

Keeping track: Can linking higher education records tell us anything about the quality of parental education data? (2022-07-05)

Assessing the quality of further and interim study data collected in the Graduate Outcomes survey (2022-06-21)

Exploration of statistical weighting in the Graduate Outcomes Survey: technical report (2021-07-20)

Graduate Outcomes - A Summary of the Year Two SOC Coding Assurance (2021-04-29)

Graduate Outcomes SOC coding – Independent Verification Analysis Report (2021-04-29)

Quality matters: The Census and HESA Widening Participation data (2021-03-16)

Should we weight? Year one of the Graduate Outcomes survey (2020-05-21)

COVID-19

The impact of COVID-19 on higher education data.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Graduate Outcomes 2019/20 (2022-06-16)

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on student data for 2020/21 (2022-01-25)

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Graduate Outcomes 2018/19 (2021-07-20)