Longitudinal Study of Debt Advice

Location

Bedford

Description

High-level objectives are the following: Phase 1 • to successfully run the developing phase, recruit participants online in need of debt advice; • create the experimental allocation (using a stratified random process); • evaluate the encouragement design aimed at creating a robust counterfactual group; and • calibrate the key parameters (such as eligibility, attrition and response rate) for the large scale longitudinal. Phase 2 • to successfully run a large-scale randomised encouragement design longitudinal study; • create the experimental allocation (using a stratified random process); • successfully implement the encouragement design; • to keep comparable and sizeable treatment and control groups during the duration of the project over four waves; and • to measure the impact of debt advice on improving the outcomes of people. Insight: • to understand the causality of debt advice has with debt and wider financial well-being indicators within the debt journey over the short, medium and long term. This includes analysing complex journeys into and out of debt over time and the causes; • to identify the immediate effects of receiving debt advice, the sustainability of the solutions and the long-term consequences of clients' decisions; and • to identify what works and what doesn't work to increase motivation for advice seeking behaviour, which is one of the most challenging objectives in the debt advice sector.

Ammendments to Previous Notice

Award Detail

CPV Codes

• 73110000 - Research services

Indicators

• Contract modified due to additional needs.

Legal Justification

Technical reasons exist to prevent the change of the contractor, as this additional activity cannot be fulfilled by another supplier, due to the interoperability with existing activities by the current supplier, as the activity associated with this modification is not a separate piece of work, rather an increase to existing activities to recruit research participants and achieve the sample size needed. The modification is permitted by Regulation 72(1)(b) Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("PCR 2015"). Additional services have become necessary for successful project delivery that were not included in the original contract, and, for technical reasons, it is not possible to change contractor without causing significant inconvenience and substantial duplication of costs. The percentage increase in value from the original contract value - approximately 21% - is within the range permitted under Regulation 72(1)(b) PCR 2015.