ResearchQuestions+University Research

Assignment: Assessing Company Sustainability Performance & Disclosure

Background

With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development it is important to track and assess the contributions of business to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The project Business Contribution to the SDGs - A Student Assessment, was created to engage students in addressing this challenge through research of public documents including company sustainability reports and Communication on Progress Reports (COPs) submitted annually by UN Global Compact company participants.

This project aims to introduce students to a collaborative research environment where they can contribute to the collection and analysis of data on companies’ performance as it relates to the SDGs. On WikiRate, students (working individually or in groups) can choose to contribute to an existing research projects or design their own.

Keep in mind the assignment allows for flexibility in the research and research questions you will ask. You can use pre-structured research scopes or develop your own. The WikiRate Team can support you in the process of creating analyses of your data on the platform (through supporting calculated metric set-up).

Before beginning your data research

• Sign up to WikiRate by clicking the Join button. Add a username (your name, student number etc.), add your email address and password, then click Submit.

• Sign up to the Research Group with your new username. Choose the group assigned by your professor.

Step-by-Step

1. Choose research topic and generate research questions. Discuss research questions and choose one or two research questions that can be answered through data collection.

   • Some example projects have been set up to answer specific research questions. These can be applied to your specific company or sector research, or you may develop your own research question to address.

   • To develop a research question, choose an SDG and consider which aspects of company performance are relevant, what tends to be reported and how this could be analysed. For inspiration, look into the SDG Compass (see the SDG Compass on WikiRate), which has mapped indicators from standards organisations like the Global Reporting Initiative (among others) to the SDGs. You can browse this mapping here and find guidance for selecting metrics relevant to specific SDGs.

2. Select the companies to be researched. We suggest starting by looking through the UN Global Compact’s database of companies here: Advanced reporters and Active reporters. Use the Company Vetting project on WikiRate to assess whether the company reports data viable for answering your research question.

   view (listing) not supported for Company Vetting

3. Research chosen companies’ data according to the Core Research Metrics (see also below). You may decide to research one company over multiple years (three is suggested), or multiple companies over one or two years. To add a new company to the Project (click on the edit icon to the right of companies). As you add answers to the research page, check the metrics’ methodology to make sure you are reporting the data correctly.

   view (listing) not supported for Business Contributions to the SDGs (PRME Research)

4. Peer review. You should be paired or pair yourself with another student to conduct a review one another’s data research. There is a mechanism on WikiRate for double-checking metric values. This exercise may require dialogue with your partner around nuances in the data reported by a company. Sustainability tracking and measurement is nuanced and often requires some level of subjectivity to interpret companies’ reports.

Design your own Research Project

1. Define your research approach. Select metrics to research, keeping in mind your research question and how you could analyse the data to answer this question (find inspiration Topics pages or the SDG Compass metrics page). Then select companies to research and analyse (for example on the basis of industry, size, geographic location and/or UN Global Compact participation). If you’d like to answer a research question already identified, look over the Projects in this Example Research Questions page, choose one of the projects and add your companies to be researched.

2. Set up your Project (if applicable). See this tutorial video on setting up Projects.

3. Research. Gather additional data you need on your companies to conduct the analysis.

4. Conduct analysis. If the project you are using was already on WikiRate, there will be analysis metrics (calculated metrics, which automatically conduct analysis once the data has been added) included. Otherwise, create new calculated metrics needed to conduct the data analysis. To solicit support from the WikiRate team, add a Conversation to your Project to discuss the research approach and what kind of calculated metric will fit. The WikiRate team will join the discussion and provide support. You can find examples of Calculated Metrics here.

About WikiRate Research Tools

Projects. If you are answering a new research question, you can create a new Project frame on WikiRate and add the set of metrics and companies you’ve chosen to research. This tutorial walks you through how to create a new project.

Metrics. To find out more about metrics, browse the Metrics page, and read about the definitions of different types of metrics on WikiRate (calculated and researched).

Sources. Add a source for research and citation see the tutorial here.

Extras. You may export data from a project or metric page for analysis off the platform.

Guidance and Useful Links

Using WikiRate. For trouble-shooting and guidance on using WikiRate.

Student Research FAQs. Answers to questions frequently asked by students using WikiRate for research for assignments.

WikiRate Values & Principles. Community principles are essential for wiki-type sites to function and help to develop communities of knowledge sharing.

Technical support. For reporting bugs.

Data research (GRI research best practices). Metric research is not always a question of finding a number and adding this value to WikiRate – different companies may calculate these numbers in different ways or vary in terms of the scope of who/what is covered. It’s helpful to have fellow researchers around to discuss the quality of data and what it actually means. Information about how a data-point was calculated, or the scope of operations it covers, is important to interpreting that value properly. Best practice on WikiRate is to always write down your methods for finding a value and the context where you found it, as a “comment” to the answer you submit (On what page number did you find the data? Is it presented with background information? Did you have to do a calculation to work out the right value?). This creates the background necessary to understand a value, and allows for a discussion around the data-point itself.

Discussion: You can use the WikiRate platform to communicate general questions or start conversations around specific topics.

For all other questions or suggestions contact WikiRate.