Evaluating the impact of the Software Sustainability Institute's fellowship programme

<p dir="ltr">In this report we present an evaluation of the Software Sustainability Institute's Fellowship programme. The goal of this programme is to “improve and promote good computation practice across all research disciplines and support those who are doing this work”. Therefore this evaluation analyses whether the fellows have 1) increased their knowledge and use of good software practices; 2) successfully promoted good software practices in their institute(s) or research domain(s); and 3) whether the Fellowship has benefitted the fellows’ professional development.</p><p dir="ltr">We performed a mixed methods evaluation with a survey to quantify the impact of the Fellowship for as many fellows as possible. We then used qualitative interviews with a subset of the survey respondents to get a deeper understanding of their experiences. </p><p dir="ltr">17 out of 71 eligible fellows completed the survey (24%). The majority of respondents improved their knowledge and use of good software practices and were supported in their professional development. They also reported they achieved the aims of their fellowship in their research domain(s) or institute(s), although they were less confident in this. Examples of benefits for the participants from the interviews include increased professional status, expanded networks and gaining leadership skills. Case studies are presented for each of the 6 interviewees.</p>