Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)

Research Assessment Exercise

The four UK higher education funding bodies Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL).periodically assess the quality and volume of research activity in the higher education institutions that they fund using the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), a peer review-based benchmarking exercise.

The most recent RAE was conducted in 2008 and produced three key outputs:

Quality, on a scale of 1*, 2*, 3* and 4* (the latter 3 ratings are defined as being of international quality, with 4* being world leading)
The number of full-time equivalent active research active staff.
The proportion of total staff submitted as research active.

The Department uses both the quality ratings from the RAE and the data provided by institutions to the RAE - including numbers of academic staff, research students and research income - to distribute funds for research (Quality-related Research funding) selectively on the basis of quality.

Northern Ireland saw strong performances over a range of subjects from Law to Art and Design, with world class performance highlighted in a number of areas including Civil Engineering, Nursing and Midwifery, Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Biomedical Sciences. Both Queen’s University of Belfast and the University of Ulster improved their performance from the RAE 2001.

The 2008 results show that the proportion of research graded at the highest level has increased since the last RAE in 2001. Half the assessed research in Northern Ireland is either internationally excellent or world-leading and more than 98 per cent of our researchers are working in disciplines where world leading research is taking place. World class performance was highlighted in a number of areas including Civil Engineering, Nursing and Midwifery, Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Biomedical Sciences.

The results were published on the 18 December 2008 and can be viewed on the RAE 2008 website at RAE 2008.

For details of the results and submissions to the previous RAE, conducted in 2001, please go to RAE 2001.

RAE is to be replaced by a new methodology for assessing research quality post-RAE 2008, known as the Research Excellence Framework (REF).