My name is Anna Farr, and I’m a research analyst at the Urban Institute focused on increasing families’ access to resources and bringing lived experience to research. And I’m Teresa Derrick-Mills, a senior fellow with 30 years of experience as a practitioner and researcher studying and improving early care and education systems. We’re writing this blog post to share lessons learned while collaborating on, designing, and carrying out Data Walks—an interactive way for researchers and community stakeholders to gather communities—virtually, in person, or both—around research findings to gain their perspective on what the data mean to them.
We designed a study with the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning to help them understand what was working and what could be improved in their quality rating and improvement system for Georgia child care programs. We hosted Data Walks to bring key information to others affected by the quality rating and improvement program and to service providers to get their insights on the data. In this post, we share lessons learned and rad resources to help you plan your own Data Walk.
Lessons Learned
1. Yes, you can do Data Walks for a statewide study. Meaningful groupings of people and Data Walk modes are key.
Much of our work is at a state or national level, and Data Walks are generally for engaging local community residents. Could we successfully do meaningful Data Walks for a statewide study? Yes! We did six: three held virtually via Zoom and three in person. For each, we presented similar data, and although participants joined from across the state, they represented distinct personal experiences with child care. This created a safe space to share with people in similar realms and helped us interpret gathered information.
2. When you’re not from the community, collaborating with a trusted, knowledgeable community partner is key for planning and hosting Data Walks.
We work for a national organization and aren’t based in Georgia, so we partnered with a statewide nonprofit, Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students (GEEARS), to lead recruitment and guide logistics based on what would work best for those we wanted to engage. GEEARS helped us identify accessible locations, consider traffic patterns, and avoid school and state holidays. GEEARS also helped us with Data Walk mode (virtual or in-person) and recommended that service providers would prefer to gather in-person, whereas it might be easier for parents to join virtually. Additionally, as a Georgia-specific organization, GEEARS served as a friendly name on the email invitations, which could be more welcoming than a large, unfamiliar organization.
3. Build in time for tailoring your data to Data Walk participants, which is likely different than how you present data to a funder.
When we looked at the graphs and figures we shared with our funder, we realized two key changes would make the data more meaningful to Data Walk participants. First was ensuring all language didn’t assume prior knowledge of the program or specialized expertise, and the second was removing graph titles suggesting a particular conclusion. In other words, we wanted to ensure the Data Walk empowered and reinforced the value of participants’ lived expertise.
Rad Resources
- See how we called out Data Walk insights to highlight lived experiences.
- Check out this resource if you’re curious about identifying who to engage in your child care and early education research and make the case for hosting Data Walks.
- If you want to plan your own Data Walks, we’ve got step-by-step info.
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Urban Institute week. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from staff at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization that provides data and evidence to help advance upward mobility and equity. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.