History

The initial RAAAP proposal was funded by NCURA's inaugural Research Program in late 2015, with two Co-PIs, Simon Kerridge and Stephanie Scott.  They were supported by an Advisory Group of Patrice Ajai-Ajagbe,  Jan Andersen, Janice Besch, Cindy Kiel, Susi Poli, and Deborah Zornes,  representing research administration professional organisations from around the world.  The aim was to survey the profession, collecting demographics of professional research administrators, and explore the relative importance of "soft" transferable skills and "hard" technical skills.

That first RAAAP (now referred to as RAAAP-1) survey elicited 2,691 responses and evoked a lot of interest.  At the 2018 INORMS Congress three of the original advisory group (Patrice Ajai-Ajagbe, Cindy Kiel, and Deb Zornes) proposed to the INORMS Council that they should endorse a follow-on RAAAP-2 survey to include more associations - and this was agreed to, albeit without any funding.  The RAAAP-2 volunteer team was formed at the second survey was conducted in 2019, focussing on support for research impact (another INORMS endorsed working group), it received 4,324 responses.

While the RAAAP-2 responses were being analysed, Simon put together another team (with Cindy, Deb, and Jennifer Shambrook of RASperS fame) to request additional funding from NCURA to undertake analyses of the two datasets and produce simple infographic style information that RMAs could use without having to process the data themselves.  This bid was also successful and the team started working on the data for the RAAAPA project in early 2020.  Then Covid... so with a couple of extensions and some additional work from Melinda Fischer from the RAAAP-3 team, the analyses and graphics were eventually produced in 2023 and were extended to include the third survey.

During Covid, Simon was speaking to colleagues about the possibility of a 3rd survey, and to keep the periodicity it would run in 2022, and discussions with Madhuri Dutta, Melinda Fischer, and Cristina Oliveira settled on "How I Became a Research Manager and Administrator" (HIBARMA) as the theme, and these four volunteers lead the RAAAP-3 survey and analysis into the 5,076 responses.

(last updated Nov 2023).

The RAAAP-3 Team are undertaking some follow-on zoom interviews with selected respondents to the survey to build exemplar stories of routes into the profession.

A RAAAP-4 survey is in the planning for 2025.