Lesson Learned:
Participatory data analysis is worth the effort and has the potential for several benefits:
- Keeping people “in the know” about program data
- Building rapport and trust among stakeholders
- Engaging stakeholder in committing to program improvement and results
- Being able to tell a more complete story of the program
But perhaps most important of all, a participatory process allows stakeholders to offer up their insights, perspectives, and understanding, supplying critical context to the data.
Rad Resources:
Fortunately, several evaluators and others have generously offered resources to help make your participatory sessions interactive and fun. Some are more suited to in-person meetings, but could be adapted with a little ingenuity. Others can be used to engage people in all kinds of meetings or presentations.
- Evergreen Data’s Scratch-off Graphs, Crossword Puzzle, Data Fortune Tellers and other fun: Blog post with directions
- Public Profit’s Dabbling in the Data: A Hands-on Guide to Participatory Data Analysis
- Community Solutions’ The Reporting Cube and other free resources
- Data Placemats
- Better Evaluation’s How to have a Data Party
- National School Reform Faculty Data Dialogue & Data Driven Dialogue Protocols
- Google Slides Sticky Note Template
Cool Tricks:
Especially now, when many of our meetings are still taking place online, don’t forget to use features built right into your video conferencing software:
- Chat box
- Annotation
- White Board
- Polling