I’m increasingly interested in methods – how do we find things out? Why do we think that’s a good way to find things out? What are the choices we can make that lead to this being a better way to find things out?
When I worked on the CCCWP evaluation with ARTD Consultants, we worked hard on method, and made sure that we really did have a useful way to find things out. And we were actually so confident in the usefulness of the method that we developed that we want to share it. First we presented at the AES conference in 2024, and now we’ve published a peer-reviewed article in the Evaluation Journal of Australasia.
The method we developed is named Participatory Analysis Workshops. Here’s what’s nifty about the method:
- It combined data collection and first-stage data analysis in a workshop with participants – this makes the whole process more collaborative and less extractive
- It’s a way to aggregate what projects achieved when you have really different projects striving for the same goal (like community wellbeing)
- It’s moderately low resource and doesn’t require huge data collection work if you’ve done the design well
- You can use this on its own, or as part of a mixed-methods approach.
Here’s a link to the article. If you want to have a chat about it, send me an email! 🙂
Abstract
This article shares a novel theory-driven method for efficient qualitative data collection and participatory first-stage analysis suitable for diverse community-facing programs. Evaluations often explore more than one project – for example, a grants program evaluation may consider the activities of each individually funded project to understand the program as a whole. This presents a challenge in how to efficiently collect data that is relevant to each project that can be aggregated across the program, especially when projects are diverse. Efficiency is also a challenge in analysis and interpretation. Well-established evidence shows the value of participatory approaches in exploring impact and implementation. However, these approaches are also generally regarded as time- and resource-intensive. Faced with these challenges in evaluating the NSW Reconstruction Authority’s COVID-19 Community Connection and Wellbeing Program, we developed a novel method – Participatory Analysis Workshops. This method combines data collection at the outcome-level and exploration of implementation barriers and enablers with collaborative participatory data analysis to build a rich qualitative understanding of projects in a low-resource way. This article presents our method and this case example, outlining key features, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and suggesting modifications to enable other practitioners to implement it in their evaluation projects.