Assessment / Workbook
Assessment workbook
Write it, then check it
Every written task in the course in one printable place, with a model answer behind a button.
These are the essay questions from every page, in course order, with space to write. Print the page and work through it, or write on screen and use the reveal buttons once you have finished.
1. You are the supervisor of a new link worker starting in two weeks. Write the induction checklist you would use on day one, in the order you would do it.
Order: welcome and introductions to the named team, then the written agreement read through together, with hours, rate, tasks, supervisor and concern route confirmed. Then the escalation card, filled in by hand, with the safeguarding and out-of-hours routes tested. Then the study explained by the link worker in their own words, with the supervisor correcting anything wrong. Then the systems: where data lives, how to name files, which device is approved. Then the first task, chosen to be small and observed. Then the supervision date, in the diary, before the meeting ends. End with the question: what would make this role impossible for you, and what would make it work?
2. Write the one-paragraph description of the role that you would put in a grant application, then list the three budget lines the description implies.
A workable paragraph: we will recruit two community research link workers from the partner organisations, people with standing in the communities the study serves, pay them at the NIHR reference rate for six hours a month, train them before the first task, and supervise them through regular team meetings and private check-ins. They will shape recruitment, co-facilitate focus groups and contribute to analysis, with the route for raising community concerns written into the protocol arrangements. The budget lines are: link worker time including training hours, expenses covering travel, childcare and data, and the partner organisation's coordination time including the lump sum arrangement for payment.
3. A community organisation offers to host a link worker, but says the person must come from the organisation's existing volunteer group and must report to its manager. Write a short reply that accepts what is good in the offer and names the two conditions that need to change.
Accept the hosting: a partner organisation with an existing volunteer group has exactly the community standing the role needs, and its manager can hold the community boundary. Then name the two conditions. First, recruitment: the post should be open to people in the community, not only to existing volunteers, or it will reproduce the network that is already engaged. Second, the reporting line: the link worker needs supervision that covers the research work and a route to raise a conflict between community and study interests. A manager inside the partner organisation can be part of that, and the study must provide the research supervisor and the concern route. Offer a written agreement that sets out both, with a shared induction.
4. A researcher tells you the link worker will sit on the study's advisory group and give a community view at three meetings a year. Write the reply that accepts the value of that role and explains why it is not a link worker post.
Accept the advisory role for what it is: three meetings a year give the study a community view at set points, and that view is worth having. Then set out the difference. An adviser is consulted; a link worker is in the team, does the work, and influences how the study runs between meetings. Name what the study would need to add for a link worker post: paid hours, a written agreement, training before the first task, a named supervisor, and a role in recruitment or data collection. Offer the choice: run the advisory group, or fund a link worker post and keep the group as well.
5. A study wants to run the IBISES model in six weeks. Write the four questions you would put to the study lead, and say what a good answer to each one looks like.
Ask: who trains, and on what dates, with a good answer naming a person and dates that allow training before the first task. Who supervises, and on what rhythm, with a good answer naming one person and a regular slot plus a private check-in. Who pays, how much and by what route, with a good answer giving a rate at or near the NIHR reference, a cash route and a payment date. What this person can change, and what they cannot, with a good answer naming decisions and the route for proposing a change. Six weeks is enough for one community with an existing relationship. If the team is starting the relationship, the honest answer is that six weeks buys a first conversation, not trust.
6. A study has funding for one link worker and a six-month timeline. Write the paragraph you would put to the study lead explaining what the model requires, and what you would advise them to cut instead of support.
Say plainly what the model requires: a named trainer, training before the first task, a named supervisor with a regular rhythm, private check-ins, payment in cash at an agreed rate, and a written memorandum with the partner organisation. Six months is workable with one community that the team already knows. What should not be cut is supervision, because the dual-role tension is where the model fails and where the community is exposed. What can be cut instead is the number of studies run in parallel, the number of communities, and any additional data collection that the team cannot supervise properly. One community done well is the better claim in the report.
7. A link worker tells you that payment feels wrong, because it turns a service to the community into a job. Write the reply, and say what the study must still do.
Acknowledge the view without arguing with it: many people give time to their community freely, and payment can feel like it changes the relationship. Then explain the study's position plainly: the role is work, the study has budgeted for it, and unpaid involvement narrows who can take part to people who can afford to give the time. Offer the choices the guidance allows: take the payment, take expenses only, take a lower amount, or ask for the payment to go to someone or something else. Record the decision. What the study must still do is offer payment in cash, at an agreed rate, for agreed hours, in writing, whatever the person decides.
8. You are starting as a link worker and the ethnography's findings sound familiar. Write the four questions you would put in your first supervision session, and say why each one matters.
Ask: what can I change in this study, and what can I not change, because the answer tells me where the role really sits. Who do I contact when I am stuck, and how fast will they answer, because a named person who does not answer is not support. When will the community hear what the study found, and in what form, because the feedback gap is the failure people remember. What will happen if I feel out of place at a meeting, because naming it early turns a private worry into a design problem the team can fix. Each question tests a finding from the case studies.
9. Write the two-minute explanation, in plain words, that you would give to a community group about a study exploring why people from their community do not attend a diabetes review. Include what you would say about data.
Something like: We want to understand why people in this community find it hard to get to their diabetes review. We are not testing you, and there are no right answers. We will talk in small groups, at the community centre, at a time we agree, for about an hour. What you say will be written up without your name, and the report will not say who said what. The recordings stay with the research team, on the university's secure system, and we delete them when the study ends. Taking part is your choice, and saying no will not affect your care. We will come back and tell you what we found. Then invite questions, and check understanding by asking the group to say the purpose back in their own words.
10. A participant asks what will happen to what she says and whether anyone will know it came from her. Write the answer you would give, and name the two things in the study you must know before giving it.
Answer: what you say is written up without your name. It goes to the research team, and it is stored on the university's secure system, not on my phone. The report will not say who said what, and small details that could identify you will be changed. The recordings are deleted when the study ends, and I can tell you the date. Before giving that answer you must know the storage route the study actually uses, and whether the ethics approval allows the changes you have just promised. If you cannot confirm both, say you will check and come back, rather than promising what the study may not do.
11. Write the confidentiality statement you would make at the start of a focus group, in plain words, and say what you would do if someone disclosed harm after you had said it.
Something like: What you say here stays in this room. We write up the discussion without names, and nobody outside the research team sees it. There is one exception. If you tell me that someone is being hurt, or that you plan to hurt yourself or someone else, I have to tell the person responsible for safety. I would tell you first, and I would not do it behind your back. If a disclosure comes after that statement, remind the person of the exception, record what was said in their words, tell the safeguarding contact or study lead the same day, record the referral, and do not investigate or inform the neighbour.
12. A colleague offers to take consent as a favour because you are running late. Write the reply, and say what the study loses if you accept.
Reply: thank you, but consent has to be taken by someone named in the approval and trained for it. If that is you, we need to check the approval and brief you properly, and if it is not, I will take it and start the group late. Lateness is recoverable; a consent taken by an unnamed person is not. What the study loses if you accept: the consent is invalid, the participant's agreement cannot be relied on, the data from that session is exposed to challenge, and the study has a reportable deviation. It also puts your colleague in the position of holding a responsibility the study did not give them.
13. Write the four lists for a study on uptake of cervical screening among women from a specific community in your area, and name one channel with a reason for each of the two gaps you identify.
List one, who the study needs: women aged 25 to 64 in the eligible group, in the named community, who have not attended in three years. List two, who is easy to reach: women who attend the community centre, the faith setting and the mothers' group; the people already known to the link worker. List three, who is hard to reach: women who work shifts, women who do not read English, women who avoid the topic because of stigma, younger women who have never been invited. List four, who is missing from both: recent arrivals, women with no contact with any community organisation, women whose only health contact is a pharmacist. Channel for gap three: a pharmacy counter with a female pharmacist and translated cards, because it reaches women who do not attend community settings and removes the need to be seen entering a centre. Channel for gap four: a WhatsApp group run by a different organisation, plus one-to-one calls, because recent arrivals are reachable only through informal networks.
14. Write the one-minute conversation you would have with a faith leader before you ask their permission to invite members of their congregation.
Say who you are, the community you come from and the study you work on. Say what the study is asking and why the congregation matters to it. Say what you would ask of the leader: permission to attend once, a short time after a service, and a channel for people to decline without speaking to you. Say what you will not do: turn up unannounced, take names from the leader, or ask people to commit in front of others. Ask what conditions the leader has, and what the community would need from the study in return. Then listen, write down what you heard, and come back with the answer rather than asking for a decision on the spot.
15. Write the opening three minutes of a focus group with six participants, including the ground rules and the limits of confidentiality, in the words you would actually use.
Welcome people by name where you can, thank them for coming and say who you are and who the study is for. Say what will happen and how long it will take, and that there will be a break. Then the ground rules, in plain words: there are no right answers, we want your view and not the view you think we want, everyone's experience matters, one person speaks at a time, and you can pass on any question or leave at any point without explaining. Then the limits: what is said here is written up without names, and nobody outside the team sees it, with one exception. If you tell me someone is being hurt, or that you plan to hurt yourself or someone else, I must tell the person responsible for safety, and I would tell you first. Then invite questions before starting.
16. A participant says something factually wrong about the service, and another participant contradicts them. Write what you say and what you record.
Say: thank you both, people have had different experiences of this, and that difference is useful to us. Then turn it into a question about each experience rather than a dispute about the facts: what happened when you contacted them, and what happened the other time. Record both accounts, in the words used, with the participant identifiers. Do not adjudicate. After the session, note in the debrief that accounts diverged, because divergence is a finding and it may explain why the service is experienced differently by different groups.
17. Write the audit trail entry for a focus group of six people held on 12 November 2026 at a community centre, where one participant became distressed and left for ten minutes. Include what an incident note adds.
Entry: study ABC, focus group 3, 12 November 2026, 18:00 to 19:40, community centre, facilitators [link worker] and [academic], interpreter none, six participants, identifiers P1 to P6, written consent recorded on forms FG-003-01 to 06, audio recorded on the study recorder, file ABC-FG-003-20261112-audio-v1.m4a, stored on the university secure drive in the ABC folder. Unusual events: P4 became distressed during the question about appointments, was offered a break and left the room for ten minutes with the co-facilitator, returned and chose to stay. The distress protocol was followed; the study lead was informed the same evening. Incident note adds: what was said immediately before, what was offered, who went with the person, whether any safeguarding concern arose, and what the person said about continuing. Both go to the lead within 24 hours.
18. You are asked to keep a copy of the recording on your own laptop so you can work on the transcription at home. Write the reply and the alternative you would offer.
Reply: I would rather not keep a copy outside the study system, because the approval and the information governance rules set where the data lives, and my laptop is not in that arrangement. Offer the alternatives: a study laptop or a loaned encrypted device; a remote desktop or the university's approved access route; or a set number of paid hours in the office to do the transcription. If none is available, ask the lead to approve the device in writing and explain the encryption and the deletion date. Record the decision either way, so the arrangement is visible if it is later questioned.
19. Take the theme 'participants did not trust the service', and write the note you would send to the team asking for it to be reworked, with the evidence you would ask for.
Say what the theme claims and what the evidence supports. Trust is doing a lot of work in one word. Ask for the quotations behind it and for the cases that contradict it, because several participants described a specific event rather than a general distrust: a letter that did not explain what the appointment was for, and a receptionist who could not say who to ask. Offer an alternative: the service was hard to use because information was unclear and no named person could answer questions. Say what would settle it: a re-read of the four cases where the person did attend, and a member-checking question asking whether the account is recognisable.
20. The team's draft report describes the community as hard to reach. Write the note you would send asking for the wording to change, with the evidence you would offer.
A note along these lines: the phrase hard to reach puts the difficulty inside the community and hides what the study did. What our data shows is that the invitation reached people through one channel, and that channel missed shift workers, people who do not read English, and people with no contact with a community organisation. Offer wording that describes the mechanism: the study reached people through a single community centre, and people outside that network were not invited in a form they could use. Ask for the recruitment log to be cited beside it, so a reader can see the channels and the gaps.
21. Write the case note you would take to supervision about a conflict between what the community organisation wants and what the study requires, with the two options you would propose.
Describe the conflict without blame: the partner organisation wants the study to report findings to its members in December; the study's analysis will not be complete until March and the team is concerned about releasing partial findings. State what you observed and what you were told, separately. Then the options. First, hold a December session on what the study is finding so far, labelled as provisional and without interpretation, with the full report in March. Second, wait until March and hold one session with the full findings, and in December send a short written update on progress and next steps. Note the risk in each: provisional findings can spread in a form the study cannot correct; a March-only session may lose the audience. Ask the supervisor to decide, with a date, and say what you will tell the partner organisation in the meantime.
22. A community member asks you, as a favour, to find out what another participant said in the group. Write the refusal and the explanation.
Say: I cannot tell you that. What people said in the group stays in the group, and that promise is what made the group usable for everyone in it, including you. If you are worried about something that was said, I can listen to your concern and take it to the team without naming anyone. If what you are asking about is a safety concern, tell me and I will follow the safeguarding route, and I will tell you what I am doing. The refusal is the same for every participant, which is why it is fair.
23. Write the paragraph of an agreement that covers hours, rate, payment route and what happens if the study pauses, for a link worker on six hours a month for nine months.
The post runs for nine months from [date] at six hours a month, made up of sessions as scheduled and agreed with the supervisor two weeks in advance. The rate is GBP [x] per hour, and hours are paid for preparation, delivery and travel. Payment is made by [route] within 14 days of the month end. Training hours are paid at the same rate. If the study pauses, the link worker is paid for hours worked and for sessions cancelled with less than seven days' notice, and no new tasks are started until the study restarts in writing. If the study ends early, four weeks' notice is given where the funder allows, with a handover of records and a final payment date.
24. A partner organisation says it cannot pay individuals and offers vouchers instead. Write the reply that keeps the relationship and solves the payment.
Reply: I understand the finance system makes small payments to individuals difficult, and I do not want the payment to become the reason the post fails. Then offer the route the model uses: a lump sum to the organisation, which pays its link workers under its own arrangements, with a simple record of hours. Add the alternatives: an honorarium paid through the university's approved process, or payment by an agreed schedule rather than per session. Say what the link worker needs to know before starting: the route, the amount, and the date. Ask for the choice in writing, so the person can see it before their first session.
25. Write the assessment plan for a cohort of eight link workers from four community organisations, including who assesses, how moderation works, and how a person whose first language is not English is fairly assessed.
Split the cohort into two groups of four for the observed tasks, with the trainer observing and the supervisor present for their own staff. Knowledge check on paper with a reader available, 45 minutes, two attempts. Portfolio submitted two weeks before the panel. The panel has three signatures: trainer, supervisor and a community partner representative. Moderation samples two of the eight, chosen by the course administrator, and any criterion scored differently by more than one point is discussed before certificates issue. For a person whose first language is not English, offer the knowledge check orally with an interpreter, allow extra time, accept the portfolio as a recorded spoken piece with an interpreter, and ensure the observer judges the behaviour and not the accent. Record every adjustment and state it in the feedback.
26. A link worker with strong practice and weak writing wants to complete the portfolio as a recorded conversation. Write the arrangement and the fairness condition.
Arrangement: the three written items may be produced as recorded conversations of ten to fifteen minutes each, with an assessor asking the questions from the workbook and the person giving the reasoning. The reflective log may be recorded in the same way, one entry per page. The recording is kept with the portfolio under the same retention rule. The fairness condition is that the assessment judges the reasoning and not the delivery: the same criteria, the same standard, no allowance made for a spoken submission and none taken away. The assessor records the decision and the reasoning in the same form used for written work.
27. Choose the four criteria you would find hardest, write the behaviour that would meet each one, and say what evidence you would need to produce.
A defensible answer names any four and gives a behaviour and evidence for each. For example, B5: at the start of a session, state the confidentiality limits in plain words, and on a disclosure tell the person what will happen, record in their words and refer the same day; evidence is the observed group note plus the escalation card in the portfolio. C7: complete the four lists and name three channels, at least one outside my own network, with who each misses; evidence is the recruitment plan and the recruitment log. D11: write a case that separates observation from interpretation and proposes two options; evidence is the case note and the supervision record. D12: refuse a task outside training by naming the limit and offering an alternative; evidence is the observed refusal or a written exchange. Marks come from the specificity of the behaviour, not from the choice of criteria.
28. Pick the criterion you think is most often missed in practice, say why, and write the feedback you would give someone who partly met it.
A defensible choice with a reason, for example C7: recruitment plans are written as lists of channels without analysing who each channel misses, because the plan is usually written to satisfy a funder rather than to reach people. Feedback: you named three channels and they are realistic, which meets the standard in part. What is missing is the analysis of who each one cannot reach: the centre reaches its own members, the pharmacy reaches people who use that pharmacy, and the WhatsApp group reaches people already in that network. Add one channel aimed at people outside your own network, and one sentence for each channel on who it misses. Then resubmit, and we will look at it together.
29. Fill in the escalation card for a study running only during office hours, and say what you would do at 19:00 on a Saturday if a participant disclosed a safeguarding concern.
The card would name the study lead and number, the supervisor, the safeguarding contact with the organisation's number, the information governance contact, and the out of hours instruction, which states the organisation's duty line or, where none exists, directs the link worker to the local authority safeguarding number. At 19:00 on a Saturday: if a person is in immediate danger, call 999. If not immediate, call the local authority's out of hours safeguarding number, record what was said in the person's words, and tell the study lead first thing on Monday, with the record made the same evening. The gap this exposes is that a card with an office-hours contact is not usable at weekends, so the written default must exist before the first session.
30. Write the session plan for a first observed practice session, where a link worker will co-facilitate a mock group of four colleagues on a benign topic, and say what the observer must record.
Plan: date and room with access notes; facilitator and observer named; four participants briefed that this is practice, not a real study, with one playing a dominant voice and one playing a hesitant participant; a topic guide on a benign subject such as how people choose where to shop for food; consent replaced by a verbal agreement to take part in practice; fifteen minutes of facilitation, ten minutes of feedback. The observer records each criterion it covers with a behaviour note: whether the guide was covered, how airtime was distributed, how the dominant voice was managed, whether silence was tolerated, and how the session closed. The note must quote or describe what the person did, and each mark must be given back to the person with the note attached.
31. Use prompt 3 from the library on a recruitment plan you know. Write the plan in three lines, then write what the prompt's answer would have to show before you would trust it.
The plan in three lines: invite through the community centre, a pharmacy counter and a WhatsApp group run by another organisation; 20 people; three weeks. To trust the answer it must name, for each channel, who it reaches and who it cannot, name who is missing across all three, give a cost in time and money, and distinguish what it read from the plan from what it inferred. It must not add a channel the plan did not contain, or claim a reach figure it cannot evidence. If it says a channel reaches everyone, the answer has failed the check and should be re-run with the instruction to analyse exclusion again.
32. Write prompt 7 (the difficult-moment plan) as you would actually use it, then say what you would check in the answer before trusting it.
The prompt: a participant in a focus group discloses that a relative is being neglected by a paid carer and asks me not to tell anyone. Give me what I say at that moment, what I record, who I tell and by when, and what I do not do. Then tell me which part I must confirm with the study lead before the session. What I check: that the answer tells the person what will happen rather than promising secrecy, that it does not ask me to investigate, that the referral is the same day rather than after the study, that it names the study's safeguarding route rather than a generic one, and that it identifies the part I must confirm in advance, which is the local route and the out of hours contact.