Using CEDARS insights to drive change

The Vitae CEDARS (Culture, Employment and Development of Academic Researchers survey) is undertaken by universities and research institutes who wish to evaluate the experiences of research staff and others in the areas of research culture, employment conditions, professional development, and research support.

In 2025, CEDARS was undertaken by 53 UK Universities, and in Portsmouth, out of a sample size of 1157 academic staff, contract researchers and research enablers, 526 provided valid responses on all key questions, resulting in a 49% response rate. This was much higher than when CEDARS was administered in 2021 and 2023 and higher than the national response rate.

Based on these excellent response rates, and the additional institutional research culture questions that were included in the Portsmouth survey, Vitae recently invited the Portsmouth Research Culture team to contribute to a national meeting for their members on the future of the CEDARs survey.

Dr Darren Van Laar, Institutional lead for Research Culture said

“Vitae wanted us to share our survey process and how we achieved such high response rates for our academics, contract researchers and research enabling staff. We were particularly pleased to be invited to contribute to this meeting as it was exploring how future CEDARS could be made more relevant for institutions wishing to measure their research culture for the Researcher concordats and the REF”.

Headlines from the Portsmouth CEDARS survey included that Portsmouth has more respondents on permanent contracts (84% Portsmouth, 72% nationally), as well as having a higher proportion of academic staff (75% vs 64% nationally) compared to research only staff. When asked whether they thought the university has a good research culture, nearly half of Portsmouth respondents (46%) indicated they agreed, with contract researchers and research enablers reporting particularly high levels of research culture (66% and 67%, respectively).

Portsmouth staff surpassed UK benchmarks, in many areas including training on equality, diversity, and inclusion (76%), participation in staff appraisals and development reviews (93%, well above the national average of 84%) and high awareness of institutional support for professional development (64%). However, only 14% of Portsmouth respondents achieve the recommended 10 days of training annually (also 14% nationally), and just 44% agree that they had sufficient time for professional development (47% nationally).

A majority of respondents at Portsmouth (79%) reported that ethical standards are high in their research environment and that inclusion within research groups is relatively strong (69%), especially as experienced by contract researchers (85%).

When asked how the Portsmouth results will be used, Dr Van Laar said

“The results are being considered by our Research Culture Development Group which has members representing researchers and researcher enabling staff from across the university”, “They are also being used in institutional action planning and, crucially, to feed into the work we are undertaking as part of the Concordat to Support Career Development of Researchers and in our preparation for future REF exercises.”

Vitae are currently reviewing CEDARS and a new set of questions, more focussed on wider research culture, are expected ready for the next survey Spring 2027. Results and updates on actions arising from Portsmouth’s 2025 CEDARS will be available here in the coming weeks. Darren added,

“We have now been invited to be members of the Vitae steering committee for the new CEDARS survey and look forward to contributing.”.