John Richardson Obituary

John Richardson is an expert in qualitative research who helped prepare the foundation for the introduction of the influential National Student Survey.

My friend and colleague John Richardson, who died at the age of 73 from bowel cancer, had a distinguished career, first in cognitive psychology and more recently as a student-centric higher education researcher. He is a leading contributor to the development of the UK's National Student Survey and knows more about students from traditionally underrepresented groups.

Born in Overseal, Derbyshire, John grew up with his mother, Mavis (nee Watts), in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, after she broke up with her father, Edwin Evans, a miner and Baptist lay preacher. In 1956, Mavis, then a civil servant, married Denis Richardson, a secretary she had met while the two were working in various branches of GCHQ.

At a time when access to higher education in england was limited, John had won an open scholarship in mathematics at St John's College, Oxford, having excelled at Cheltenham grammar school and benefited from a role model in his uncle, Cedric Watts (the first in his family to pursue higher education).

He moved on to Oxford's general degree programme in  philosophy and psychology before completing his PhD in experimental psychology at the University of Sussex. In 1975, he took a lecture on psychology at the fledgling Brunel University, where he was appointed dean of the faculty of humanities in 1989 and promoted to professor in 1991. His initial research looked at human memory and cognition in healthy people, but he also studied the effects of brain damage in patients (especially after microcephaly).

John promotes the use of qualitative methods such as interviews, diaries, and groups focused on researchers and their students. In the 1990s, he organized training funded by the Council for Economic and Social Research, which led to a widely used textbook on qualitative methods in psychology and the social sciences.

In 2001, John moved from Brunel to the Open University, where he was appointed to a new chair in student learning and evaluation, based at the Institute of Educational Technology. His work began with the experience of deaf or deaf students, and then examined the role of gender, social class and ethnicity in participation and attainment in UK higher education.

He contributed to a 2003 report on the collection and use of student feedback to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), and was part of a team that carried out a pilot study for Hefce that led to the introduction of the National Student Survey in 2005 – now an annual source of information with photos. Great enjoyment of the experience of nearly half a million students in UK higher education.

John is a member of both the Higher Education Research Association and the Academy of Social Sciences. He retired from OU in 2017 and was appointed professor emeritus. He continues to supervise research and publishing students. His final work was a review of research papers comparing the readability of serif and sans serif typefaces, published in February 2022.

In 1984, John marrried Hilary Robertson, who was working at OU when they met. Hilary survives, as well as their daughters, Kat and Annie.