Frequently Asked Questions

About SORT Online

Find answers to common questions about SORT Online.

What is SORT Online?

SORT Online is a secure digital platform that enables health and care organisations to use the Self-Assessment of Organisational Readiness for Research Tool (SORT) within their own organisation. It is a validated framework designed to help organisations understand and strengthen their research readiness and research culture, particularly for nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals (NMAHPs).

SORT Online does not assess individuals and is not a workforce register. Instead, it provides organisations with a practical, structured way to implement the SORT tool locally, gather staff perspectives, analyse results, and generate reports to support organisational development and improvement planning.

Using SORT Online, organisations remain fully in control of:

• how the tool is configured

• which staff groups are invited to take part

• how results are interpreted and used locally

How does SORT Online work?

Through SORT Online, organisations can:

• Create an organisational account and nominate authorised users

• Configure an already designed and validated SORT survey

• Choose which professional groups they wish to include, for example:

  • nurses only

  • midwives only

  • AHPs only

  • nurses and midwives

  • nurses, midwives, and AHPs

• Use the appropriate version of the survey for the selected group or groups, noting that survey questions differ depending on the professional group to reflect role-specific contexts and experiences

• Invite staff to complete the survey

• Automatically gather, analyse, and interpret responses

• Generate reports to support organisational assessment, planning, and evaluation

SORT Online functions as a facilitation, analytics, and reporting platform to support organisational learning and improvement.

What is SORT Online not?

SORT Online is:

• not an individual performance tool

• not a workforce register

• not a reporting mechanism to national bodies

• not a regulatory or compliance system

Its purpose is organisational learning, development, and improvement.

Using the survey

Is SORT Online an individual assessment?

No. SORT Online supports an organisational-level self-assessment.

While individual staff members complete the survey, they do so at the request of their organisation. Responses are aggregated to provide an organisational view of research readiness and culture.

SORT Online is not used to assess, monitor, or profile individual staff members.

Why does the survey ask whether someone is a nurse, midwife, or allied profession?

Organisations can choose to survey different professional groups, either separately or together. Identifying professional group ensures that:

• the correct version of the survey is used, and

• results can be interpreted meaningfully at an organisational level

This information is used for contextual and analytical purposes only and does not turn the survey into an individual assessment.

Who decides which staff are invited to complete the survey?

The organisation does. Each organisation decides:

• which professional groups to include

• how widely to distribute the survey

• how results will be used for local development and improvement

SORT Online does not send surveys directly to staff without organisational instruction.

Data & Privacy

Who can access the data?

Each organisation can access its own data only within its secure workspace.

There is no default access to other organisations' data, and no automatic benchmarking unless this is locally agreed and managed.

Does the data remain within our organisation?

The ownership of data belongs to the organisation collecting it. Data can be shared with the University of Sheffield only with consent from both the organisation and participant.

We are compliant with GDPR and can remove data for an entire organisation, project, or survey by request. However, it may be impossible to identify and remove individual survey responses as they are submitted anonymously by default.

The data required for normal operation of the application (survey data, user accounts, evidence/action statements and attachments, etc.) is stored on a secure virtual machine hosting the SORT Online application. This data is only accessible to our system administrators who require access to perform maintenance on the system.

Data provided to the University of Sheffield under consent is periodically extracted from the system, anonymised, and stored in separate secure research storage. Consent is provided via a tick box when creating a survey and a tick box shown to participants when completing a survey.

Is the data anonymous?

Yes. Individual survey responses are anonymous.

SORT Online does not collect names, email addresses, IP addresses, or other identifiable information from respondents. Reporting is aggregated and focused on organisational insight rather than individual profiling.

Is SORT Online linked to national workforce or regulatory systems?

No. SORT Online is not linked to national workforce registers, regulatory systems, or performance reporting.

Data entered into SORT Online are not automatically shared with NHS England or any other national body.

Can data be used for research?

Organisations may choose to consent for their anonymised, aggregated data to be included in approved research studies aimed at understanding and improving research capacity across the health and care sector.

This is optional and separate from using SORT Online for organisational improvement. Organisations can use the platform without consenting to academic research use of their data.

Can organisations withdraw their data?

Yes. Organisations can withdraw consent for research use of their anonymised data at any time. Their data will continue to remain available for their own organisational use within the platform.

 Getting Started

Do I need to pay to use SORT Online?

No, SORT Online is free to use.

Should we create multiple accounts to share access, or use a one shared login?

You should create a separate account for each individual who will be administering your surveys. All these accounts would be contained within one Organisation.

If you register with the tool and create an organisation, you can then invite others to join that organisation. These users will then be able to manage the surveys within that Organisation.

How should we set up SORT Online for multiple Trusts or care groups?

This depends on whether Trust managers need to see each other's surveys and results:

If sharing is acceptable: You can create a single organisation and invite all the Trust managers to it. Each Trust manager can then create projects representing their individual Trust or CBU/care group and administer their own surveys.

If data must be isolated: We recommend each Trust creates their own organisation. It is possible to export survey data and analyse it outside of the platform if needed.

For every survey you create, you can modify the demographic questions to include the various CBU/care groups being surveyed, and this can be tailored for each Trust.

Technical Issues

I'm having trouble accessing the tool from my NHS device

NHS networks often have strict firewall restrictions that may block access to external web applications. Please see our Troubleshooting Guide for detailed steps to resolve this issue.