Maria-Clorinda Catherine Luck

Strategic Role Responsibilities:

Holding the UK government to account on their policies;

Supporting MPs in debates and oral question sessions with briefing material;

Leading MPs on policy area team focus and strategic direction; Supporting MPs with legislation, legislative steer and amendment production;

Identifying policy development opportunities and building political narratives through policy paper research;

Researching and writing conference resolutions;

Supporting portfolio-related conference fringe event research and party brach event research;

Developing and maintaining relationships with stakeholders (Embassies, think tanks, interest groups and NGOs/INGOS);

Contributing to building the SNP Westminster Group’s engagement strategy;

Assisting MP constituency offices with policy queries;

Generating content in collaboration with the Group press communications and media teams.

Completed training sessions: Dods Training in Reading Legislation, Report Writing through UK Parliament training service, Completed Line Management Coaching session through UK Parliament training service.

• Assisted my Senior Researcher on all the above as part of a two-person team.

• To cover the paternity leave for a colleague I also was asked to take on a parliamentary assistant role for Martin Docherty-Hughes MP for a period of 4 months. My extra duties included: supporting the MP in his role on the Defence committee (creating briefing material and lines of questioning), helping draft amendments for Committee reports, responding to press correspondence and Committee enquiries, undertaking research on relevant subjects to ensure the MP is accurately informed on key issues.

Role responsibilities & duties: Working collaboratively as part of a team to deliver high quality quantitative, qualitative and mixed method research and evaluations across a wide range of projects, designing research, monitoring fieldwork and fieldwork figures, implementing rigorous analysis and reporting to external clients and other stakeholders to build policy knowledge in key areas, designing data collection tools and associated documents, overseeing survey data collection, delivering and leading on presentations, briefings and reports to a high standard, maintaining and promoting high ethical, legislative, procedural and information confidentiality standards in relation to the collection, management, storage and destruction of data.

Other skills developed: Meeting agenda and minutes writing, literature review writing, helping proposal writing for grant bids, liaising with PR/Press/Communications teams to improve reach and policy impact of reports, understanding of tendering systems, understanding of data security/consent/GDPR, completing rapid evidence assessments, compiling literature reviews.

Qualitative and quantitative software packages used regularly: Abstrackr (journal abstract screening used in rapid evidence reviews), SSPS (running data tables, running frequencies and other descriptive statistics on datasets, syntax management, using multicode macros and cross tabs, mail merge syntax, and providing significance testing and further data analysis).

Training courses attended: Questionnaire Design, Report Writing, Weighting & Sampling, Evidence Review, SPSS, Cognitive Interview Testing.

Examples of studies/reports worked on: Scottish Health Survey for the Scottish Government, Visual Impairment & Road Collision Rapid Evidence Review for the Department for Transport, Sex and Gender Census Question Testing for National Records of Scotland. Youth Homelessness in West Dunbartonshire (Qualitative Research Project).

Social Research Association Committee Member for Scotland during time.