CLIENT: National DoorWatch

PROJECT: Research and Policy Advisors

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What were MAKE asked to do?

National Doorwatch is the body representing many individuals in the door supervisory sector. It seeks to professionalise an industry which was once considered a major problem but which, through its regulatory body - the Security Industry Authority (SIA), and National DoorWatch itself, has radically improved its reputation.

However, challenges remain, particularly around the safety of the door supervisors themselves and the support offered to them from their direct employers (security companies) and indirect employers (the leisure retail industry). To this end, and in conjunction with the SIA, National DoorWatch conducted a number of surveys with large samples of door supervisors to understand the issues facing workers in the industry, and in particular the safety of those operating ‘one person’ doors.

The research itself was groundbreaking, but National Door asked MAKE to help advise on the methodological issues raised by combining surveys and how the results could best be presented for maximum impact.

How did MAKE do it?

  • Suggested where to ‘look’ for potentially interesting and newsworthy stories, resulting in important findings about the conditions of work that young or female or less experienced door supervisors experience.

  • We drew on our strong research heritage and examined the various online survey data sets and advise where questions could be brought together and when that this would stretch the methodological validity.

  • We suggested how National DoorWatch present the results in a way that would reach a wider audience than the academic format that the research was written up in.

What happened next?

The results have provided an important and unique perspective into the issues faced by door supervisors. Whilst often seen as the ‘strong arm’ of the night-time economy, it is clear that the job itself is often risky, uncertain and that much better investment in training and staffing levels is required from those using door supervisors in their premises.

What unique value did MAKE bring to this project?

We used our editorship of the After Dark journal with its circulation of 3,000 policymakers and practitioners from central government to local authorities, leisure-retail companies to charities to get the findings out to an audience who could deploy the research immediately at the local level.