Liz Zadnik on Evaluation at the 2015 National Sexual Assault Conference

Hello all! Liz Zadnik here with another Saturday post to start the weekend off right! I’ll be bringing you a rundown on some of the evaluation-minded workshops from this year’s National Sexual Assault Conference (NSAC). The conference was in Los Angeles, CA and was hosted by the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CALCASA).

Rad Resource: CALCASA organized a “paper-light” conference this year so a lot of workshop materials and resources are available online.

Campus-based Sexual Violence and LGBTQI+ Experiences: Findings and Recommended Strategies from the North Carolina Safe and Healthy Campuses Study walked us through the multi-year process of creating a survey to gather experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, intersex and other gender non-conforming (LGBTQI+) students on campuses throughout North Carolina. Jen Przewoznik, Director of Prevention and Evaluation at the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault, brought candor and incredible insight when describing the process, results, and lessons learned.

Rad Resource: Does Jen’s name sound familiar? That’s because she offered a fantastic post on engaging in research with LGBTQI+ communities that could serve researchers, evaluators, and practitioners alike.

What Do I Do With All This Text? Skill-Building to Demystify Qualitative Analysis offered some great, accessible approaches to qualitative data analysis. Rose Hennessy, Prevention and Evaluation Coordinator at the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, walked participants through binary and multi-option coding of open-ended question responses and shared tips for interpreting large quantities of text and using general group coding to make sense of it all

Lesson Learned: Rose had some great insights and personal anecdotes for making this approach work for anti-sexual violence practitioners. My favorite was, when attempting to reach consensus, she encouraged us to say, “I understand you may not like this, but can you live with it?” in order to get people to see the bigger picture.

Coaching Boys Into Men in the Iron City: Adapting Prevention Strategy to Local Context with another familiar name! Sharon Wasco offered some insights into thoughtfully implementing and evaluating Coaching Boys Into Men, a prevention strategy partnering with athletic coaches working with young men. Sharon shared the framework of evidence-based system of innovation of support (EBSIS) and the importance of relationships in engaging young men and boys in sexual violence prevention.

Assessments that Unite: Multi-Service Programs Providing Sexual Assault Services with Sally Laskey of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, Kris Bein of the National Resource Sharing Project, and yours truly! Participants got some hands-on experience with a self-assessment for advocates serving survivors of sexual assault within multiservice organizations.

There were some other great workshops I had to miss – this year’s conference was fantastic and I’m so excited to see an increase in evaluation-minded topics each year.

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