BIS: Economic Impact Study of RSA & SFIE

OMB Research worked alongside a consortium from Kingston, Aston and Warwick Business Schools on this research which was jointly commissioned by the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (formerly the DTI), the Scottish Executive, the Welsh Assembly and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland. We were responsible for the programme of telephone interviews that fed into the overall economic evaluation of the Regional Selective Assistance (RSA), Selective Financial Investment for England (SFIE) and Selective Financial Assistance (SFA) schemes.

The project consisted of over 2,000 interviews with businesses across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A particular challenge of this research was to collect detailed turnover and employee data over the previous 6 years to enable the performance of beneficiary and non-beneficiary firms to be compared and modelled using econometric selection modelling techniques.

“OMB Research played a crucial role in the successful completion of this major evaluation study. Their expertise in survey design, sample selection and final database preparation for analysis was exemplary. Without their patient professionalism we would certainly not have been able to deliver this evaluation on time and with complete confidence about the quality of the firm-level data.”

Professor Mark Hart, SBRC, Kingston Business School.