PhD Research – a mixed-methods approach to develop a model of decision-making
Claire’s PhD research
Decision making in the event industry is often adhoc and highly subjective, being based on intuition, heuristics and neural constructs, particularly when in the midst of live event operations. This research seeks to understand and evaluate the on-event decision making process using a mixed methods approach to create a model of good practice.
Claire used both quantitative and qualitative methods to understand the on-event decision process in a way that is grounded in reality and application to industry. The first stage of research was a scenario based survey in collaboration with The Power of Events to utilise the Event Insights App to engage event managers directly. This was followed by iterative Policy Delphi sessions and on-event observations at Silverstone.
Having passed her viva exam, Claire is now Dr Drakeley!

Collaborators
Supervisory Team – Dr Sarah Rawlinson, Dr Nick Naumov, Dr Zia Khan, Dr Marcella Daye (Director of Studies)
The Graduate School and the Faculty of Business & Law, University of Northampton
Methodology – Harding Center for Risk Literacy
Technological Development – MUTI Live
The Power of Events
As part of Claire’s collaboration with The Power of Events, her survey is being used to pilot the Event Insights App. In addition to accessing event professionals directly, she is also writing a comparative study on the differences and impacts of using the Event Insights App rather than traditional methods for events-focused research projects.
Silverstone
To ensure that this research is truly embedded in practice, Claire has been granted access to Event Control at Silverstone Circuits to observe on-event decision making as part of testing the model. This unprecedented access will not only provide real-world experiential data to the research but will also be referenced against the Event Log to minimise bias.

Want to know more…
If you’re interested in being part of this research, have any queries about it or would like to receive a summary of the results, please get in touch.