Thank you!
Thank you again for participating in an interview at St Mary’s University, Twickenham in Spring/Summer 2025. We appreciate you taking the time to share your stories and perspectives with us.
Purpose of the interview
As outlined in the consent form, the purpose of the interview was to contribute to research being conducted by TASO (Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education), exploring what students find helpful in their journey through university, and where they might seek support if they needed it.
As stated in the consent form, we selected you for interview because we wanted to speak to students who we knew had participated at some point in a variety of university-led interventions. We can now confirm that the research was primarily interested in evaluating the Boundary Spanner intervention at the university which includes both ‘Reprezent Health’ and ‘Hang out and Paint’ sessions.
Research findings
You can read the full research report here.
The key findings of the evaluation are:
- The intervention provided students with a social space to make connections and develop friendships with peers, leading to an increased sense of belonging at university.
- The role of facilitators was crucial in providing informal academic and wellbeing support to students.
- The gym and art activities themselves held intrinsic value and supported student wellbeing.
- There was little evidence to suggest that the intervention increased students’ awareness of formal support services.
- Other factors such as university events, academic staff and Wellbeing Services were also reported to be influencing key intended outcomes. For social and wellbeing outcomes, the intervention was the most frequently reported driver of change, but academic outcomes were more likely to be influenced by other factors.
- Key challenges experienced during the implementation of the intervention included student recruitment and staff engagement, which limited the actualisation of key causal pathways in the theory of change.
- Limitations of the research include lack of quality sampling and monitoring data.
Feel free to get in touch
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to get in touch via info@bathsdr.org.
