ARK aims to support policy development and debate in Northern Ireland through providing information and critical analysis.

• Policy Unit
  The Policy Unit of ARK has built on its close connections to the voluntary sector and initiated links with policy makers within the Northern Ireland Assembly and Government departments. It has worked to develop a facility for a more critical appraisal of policy which is based on knowledge and evidence, and which encourages public engagement with Social Policy.

• ARK Ageing Programme
  The ARK Ageing Programme supports engagement between the age and academic sectors. As part of this, we encourage and facilitate the production of research that will support lobbying and advocacy, and the sophisticated use of information and evidence by the age sector.

• The Lively Project
  This pilot project seeks to communicate the rich perspective that is provided by living a long life, by asking six older people to identify six objects.

• Catalogue of survey datasets relevant to research on older people in Northern Ireland
  This catalogue of key datasets relevant to research on older people's issues provides an invaluable resource for researchers wishing to undertake secondary analysis on older people in Northern Ireland. The catalogue is not a static document, and will be updated as necessary. (Updated February 2017)

• Buying abortion through the internet: exploring the social harm of criminalising abortion in Northern Ireland and the UK
  The aim of this study is to provide a new framing of the debate around social harm and the criminalisation of abortion in the United Kingdom.

• Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report
  A team from ARK led by Gillian Robinson has been awarded the contract to produce the fifth report for the Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring (NIPM) project.

• ORB - A Collection of Online Searchable Databases
  The Online Research Bank is a collection of searchable databases containing bibliographies and summaries of research focused on the lives of adults and children in Northern Ireland. There are currently two databases – the ORB Social Policy Database which consists of social policy documents based on research carried out in Northern Ireland since 1990 and the ORB Children and Young People’s Research Database which concentrates on research carried out with children and young people in Northern Ireland since 2000.

• Qualitative Archive on Ageism
  ARK has developed a pilot archive of in-depth interviews with older people looking at attitudes to ageing and ageism. The valuable information contained within these qualitative interviews complements the facts and figures produced by our other projects including: Attitudes to Older People, Grandparenting, Pensions and Pensioners and Older People in Northern Ireland, as well as the ARK Ageing Programme.