Project Partner Challenge: Evaluating Fraud and Cyber Crime Behaviour Change Campaigns

SPRITE+ and the City of London Police

Having recently launched our Project Partner Challenge Grant which provides a vehicle for organisations to commission research on a topic of need in the areas of digital trust, identity, privacy and security (TIPS), we are excited to announce that our first Project Partner Challenge, with the City of London Police (CoLP), is now live.

Background:

In 2019 His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) carried out an inspection of the police response to fraud and recommended work to evaluate the effectiveness of public awareness campaigns in changing public behaviours related to fraud and cybercrime. Such campaigns seek to change behaviour by providing actionable guidance to protect the public against fraud. The campaigns utilise several communication platforms (e.g., social media, email alerts, media releases) to circulate protect advice around fraud and cybercrime. The protect campaigns are built with the intent to collect data on behaviour change through victim survey responses, social media impressions, and public self-reported adoption of prevention measures.

City of London Police (CoLP) is the national lead force for fraud, providing a national reporting service for victims via the Action Fraud Service. CoLP is responsible for Action Fraud and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), which designs awareness campaigns to inform the public of the risk of fraud and steps they can take to protect themselves online.

To support CoLP in addressing HMICFRS’ recommendation for further evaluation of awareness campaigns, SPRITE+ is commissioning a research project to co-develop an outcome evaluation of the effectiveness of these campaigns in changing behaviour.

 

Call for Proposals:

SPRITE+ welcomes applications to co-develop with CoLP an outcome evaluation of public awareness campaigns. These campaigns use a variety of mediums (e.g., videos, animations, emails, social media content, and other media products), and collect related behavioural data from survey responses, social media impressions, and public self-reported adoption of prevention measures.

The successful applicant will have the opportunity to work with CoLP to shape existing measures of behaviour, and to propose additional forms of data that have been validated as effective ways to show behaviour change.  They will not input into the design of the actual campaign (i.e., comms strategy).

The successful application will:

i.  Propose an outcome evaluation that is grounded in theory, and which allows the impact of different delivery mediums on behaviour to be shown.

ii.  Include an initial evaluation of public awareness campaigns using the proposed approach.

As part of the deliverables for this research project, the successful applicant will be expected to offer recommendations for improving police response to online fraud and cybercrime in the future.

Application deadline: Sunday 14th September 2025.

Download the application form here:

PPCG_CoLP_Application_Lastname.docx

Download DOCX • 55KB

Timeline:

This is a short-term commission, which should be completed within six months of commencement. New forms of data collection will be piloted in November 2025 and the successful applicant should aim to have their proposed methodology developed by this time, ready to be tested.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with us at spriteplus@manchester.ac.uk