What is understood and retained?
We want to examine what participants understand following a learning experience and what appears to remain over time.
Research & Learning
We are interested in what happens after the room.
Learning may happen in the room. Evidence requires us to look beyond it.
The 3H Foundation is developing a research and learning programme to examine what participants understand, retain, practise and apply after communication learning experiences.
Rather than assuming that a successful workshop produces lasting change, we want to investigate what remains over time, what changes, what fades and what conditions may influence the difference.
The Question Behind the Research
A workshop can end in a day. Its effects are a different question.
Immediate reactions can tell us something about a learning experience. Participants may report that a session was useful, engaging or clear.
But those responses do not necessarily tell us what happens afterwards.
- 01
What do participants remember?
- 02
What do they use?
- 03
Does their communication practice change?
- 04
What appears to continue over time?
- 05
What appears to decline?
- 06
What helps application — and what gets in the way?
These are some of the questions shaping the 3H Research Programme.
Phase I
Beginning with a question we can investigate responsibly.
Our current Phase I research question is:
What changes occur in participants’ purposeful communication competence across Head, Heart and Hands following participation in a structured 3H Framework™ intervention, to what extent are these changes sustained over 180 days, and what factors are associated with their sustained application or decline?
This question is designed to examine change over time following participation.
At this stage, the Foundation does not treat observed change as proof that the 3H Framework™ caused that change.
Without an appropriate comparison or other defensible causal design, other explanations may remain possible.
Phase I is therefore intended to help us examine trajectories, application, retention, decline, context and measurement before stronger causal claims are considered.
We want the strength of our claims to follow the strength of our evidence.
Longitudinal Learning
Looking beyond immediate feedback.
Our emerging longitudinal approach follows learning across five points in time.
- T0Before
Baseline
What does communication practice look like before the learning experience?
Time point 1 of 5 - T1Immediate
After the learning experience
What was understood, experienced and intended immediately afterwards?
Time point 2 of 5 - T2Day 30
Early application
What has begun to be remembered, practised or applied?
Time point 3 of 5 - T3Day 90
Continuation and change
What appears to be continuing, changing or declining?
Time point 4 of 5 - T4Day 180
Longer-term follow-up
What remains, what has been integrated, and what may have been modified or abandoned?
Time point 5 of 5
The purpose is not to manufacture a success story. It is to observe the journey honestly.
What We Want to Learn
Change is only one part of the question.
Our research interests extend beyond whether a participant reports improvement. We are interested in understanding the wider journey through which communication learning may be remembered, applied, sustained, adapted or abandoned.
What enters practice?
We want to explore whether, how and where participants report applying what they learned in real communication situations.
What appears to continue?
We want to examine what practices, ideas or behaviours appear to remain across different points in time.
What gets in the way?
We want to understand the conditions that may make application difficult, inconsistent or unsustainable.
What might influence the journey?
Communication does not happen in isolation. Environment, opportunity, prior experience and communication setting may all matter.
Where might our assumptions be wrong?
We are also interested in situations where ideas do not appear useful, expected changes do not occur, participants adapt or abandon what they learned, or evidence challenges what we expected to find.
Research & Framework Development
The research does not exist to prove the Framework right.
The 3H Framework™ is being developed alongside practice, learning and evidence.
Research may strengthen some assumptions.
It may complicate others.
It may reveal differences across people or contexts.
It may expose weaknesses in how something has been defined or measured.
And it may require parts of the Framework, its applications or our assumptions about it to be refined.
Evidence must be allowed to challenge the idea that produced the research.
For this reason, null, mixed, negative and unexpected findings can all contribute to learning.
The purpose of research is not to protect the 3H Framework™ from difficult evidence. It is to help us understand what the evidence can responsibly support.
Our Approach
Curiosity before certainty.
As the 3H Research Programme develops, several principles guide how we want to approach the work.
Voluntary Participation
Participation should be informed and voluntary.
Participation in a learning experience should not automatically constitute consent to participate in research.
Research is Distinct from Programmes
Learning and research are connected, but they are not the same thing.
Research participation should be clearly distinguished from ordinary programme participation.
Community is Separate
Participation in research does not automatically create community membership.
Opportunities for continued community participation should remain voluntary and separately chosen.
Claims Should Match Evidence
What we say should reflect what the research can actually support.
We aim to distinguish observation from causation, immediate responses from longer-term outcomes, and promising signals from established findings.
Context Matters
Findings belong to the conditions in which they were produced.
We should not assume that results from one population, setting or communication context automatically apply everywhere else.
Evidence Before Scale
Growth should not outrun learning.
We want expansion, adaptation and wider application to be informed by credible evidence rather than institutional enthusiasm alone.
As the research programme develops, appropriate ethical, methodological and independent review should accompany the level of research being undertaken.
Where We Are Now
The evidence base is being built.
The 3H Research Programme is currently in an early proof-of-concept and protocol-development stage.
We are developing the research architecture, longitudinal follow-up systems, measurement approach, participant protections and methodological foundations required for more rigorous study.
- This means some questions remain deliberately open.
- Measures may require further development and validation.
- Research designs may need refinement.
- Methods may change as we learn.
- And future evidence may strengthen, narrow or challenge assumptions we hold today.
Our current position
We do not currently present the 3H Framework™ as a scientifically validated causal model.
Our aim is to build toward evidence carefully enough that future claims can be judged by the quality of the research behind them.
Research Progress
The research journey so far
The 3H Foundation is building evidence longitudinally. These figures describe where the current cohort has reached in the 3H Research Programme — no more, and no less.
Research Collaboration
Good questions become stronger when others are willing to challenge them.
The 3H Foundation welcomes thoughtful engagement from researchers, universities, research institutions, measurement specialists and other partners interested in communication, learning, behaviour, longitudinal research and human development.
We are particularly interested in engagement that can strengthen research design, measurement, ethics, analysis, contextual understanding and the responsible development of the 3H Framework™.
The aim is not to find people who will confirm what we already believe.
We are interested in people who can help us ask better questions, test our assumptions and build stronger evidence.
The Standard
Evidence should precede scale.
The 3H Foundation is interested in what purposeful communication could make possible.
But possibility is not evidence.
A compelling framework is not the same as a validated framework. A successful workshop is not the same as demonstrated long-term impact. Participant enthusiasm is not, by itself, proof of behavioural change.
Our responsibility is to keep asking what the evidence actually allows us to say.
And where the answer is not yet clear, we should be willing to say:
We do not know yet. We are building the research to find out.