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Back in Middlesbrough today, Lynne and Steve picked up the Skelton questionnaires and will be starting in a week’s time.

Good luck everyone!

Great news in Moorsholm – Terry has delivered all 150 surveys to households in the village and in Stanghow. We are very grateful to those who have returned completed surveys and are looking forward to finding out how people are using computers and the internet.

The prize draw for Moorsholm takes place soon – Friday 27th November. Keep a look out for the winning number…

Skelton and Redcar researchers will receive their surveys this week and we look forward to starting there. Meanwhile, Carlin How and Skinningrove are making good progress and we look forward to the results from these villages.

Here we are in full swing (from left to right John, Pauline, Steve, Lynne, Roger, Nick and Carrie’s boots)

Pauline (below pictured with Nick and Carrie) will be joining Nick in the Redcar node to begin the survey in early November.

It was great to start work with our third group of researchers, who come from different towns and villages across East Cleveland. We look forward to moving into the survey stage and to broadening our research and the network of researchers.

Phase 1, which included developing a community research network and mapping local ICT provision, has been a success. The community researchers and the DVN team have accessed a wide range of local services to find out what ICT provision is on offer. We are currently working on the analysis of this data and will report our findings in the autumn.

Our digital map of ICT provision across Redcar and Cleveland is under development with support from Prof Mike Lockyer from the School of Computing and Maths at Teesside University.

Some of the community mapping will continue into the second phase and we are currently broadening our network of community researchers. Adverts have gone out in the local press and we look forward to meeting potential researchers in the coming weeks. New researchers will join the existing network and start on phase 2 activities. They will receive initial training on the DVN project, ethics and safety and digital media for social research before going on to assist with the survey.

Our existing community researchers have evaluated their initial training sessions and we are pleased to report that the workshops have been a success.

The household survey will begin in October 2009. Community researchers have taken part in workshops 4 and 5 and are currently preparing their survey distribution strategies. The survey will take place in Moorsholm, Redcar, Skinningrove, Carlin How and Saltburn. It aims to generate information on computer and internet use within these communities. We aim to answer questions such as, ‘How many people currently have broadband access in the home?’, ‘How often do people use the internet at home?’ and ‘What are people using the internet for?’.

We would like to thank everyone who has taken part so far in phase 1 of the research and community researchers for helping us to successfully deliver the first part of the project. We look forward to starting phase 2 in the autumn (2009).

Nick Murray

On Friday 3rd April 2009, Paul and Carrie went to Redcar to sign up the project’s third community researcher, Nick Murray. They met at Redcar Mind to discuss the role and talk about the forthcoming research plans. Nick is also the first researcher to join the Redcar node. The team are delighted to have researchers based in four of the six research nodes. Nick will join the other community researchers for the first research methods workshop in late April.

Unfortunately, Paul and Carrie forgot to take a camera with them, but Steve has found an excellent subsitute photo so that we can celebrate the expansion of the research network in pictures.