Hi, fellow evaluators! We’re Melissa Siegel Barrios, Founder and Evaluator, and Jasmine Temple, MA, Researcher and Evaluator at MSB Consulting, LLC (Concord, NC). Our team partners with organizations across North Carolina to evaluate the impact of community programs through a collaborative, equity-driven approach guided by the MSB Consulting Data Collection & Evaluation Framework.
Our Data Collection & Evaluation Framework
Our framework ensures evaluation is ethical, culturally grounded, community-centered, and equity-driven. It rests on five core components:
- Health equity: This approach examines barriers faced by marginalized communities and works to remove them. This helps evaluations identify disparities, understand root causes, and support decisions that improve outcomes for groups most negatively impacted.
- Accessibility and inclusivity: Tools, materials, and procedures are designed so everyone can participate meaningfully; people with disabilities, people from diverse cultural backgrounds, and people with varying levels of experience. Inclusive evaluation produces more accurate and representative insights.
- Culturally responsive and anti-racist practices: Evaluation must respect cultural differences, acknowledge the impact of racism and bias, and intentionally avoid harm. Without cultural context, evaluation can produce misleading or harmful results. This component ensures evaluation is truthful, respectful, and aligned with equity.
- Community and partnership engagement: Community members, youth, practitioners, and partners participate in planning, decision-making, and evaluation design. Their involvement builds trust, brings in diverse perspectives, and leads to solutions that fit real community needs.
- Education and enrichment: We share knowledge, tools, and resources to build skills in violence prevention, evaluation, and related areas. Education empowers communities to understand and act on findings.
Together, these components create evaluations that are ethical, credible, community?driven, and impactful, the core promise of our framework.
Lesson Learned: Evaluation Must Be Collaborative and Iterative
Evaluation plans must be flexible and built collaboratively. Early in our work, evaluating a Teen Dating Violence prevention program, we learned that evaluation is strongest when evaluators and implementers work closely together. Understanding what partners want to learn, participating in implementation discussions, and identifying creative data sources strengthens evaluation and builds shared ownership.
Hot Tip: Center Community Voice Early and Often
Bring community members and participants into evaluation planning, tool design, interpretation, and sense-making. Youth can co-create survey questions or lead peer focus groups, making tools more accurate and relevant. Use shared decision-making to build buy-in, and apply a health-equity lens to identify barriers and unequal conditions. Always ask who might be left out and why.
Hot Tip: Use Principles-Focused Evaluation (PFE)
If you value equity and community voice, measure it. Use principle fidelity checklists to track alignment over time. Scores should support accountability, not judgment. Celebrate progress and identify next steps. Evaluation is not about proving perfection, it’s about learning. Focus on opportunities to strengthen programs, especially for communities most impacted by inequities.
Hot Tip: Infuse Equity into Team Learning
Equity work is a journey. At MSB Consulting, our monthly team meetings focus on professional development. Between meetings, we each engage with webinars, podcasts, articles, or toolkits to deepen our understanding of equity in evaluation. We then share insights and participate in activities to grow together. Whether through a similar model or your own approach, continuous learning is essential for infusing equity into your work.
Hot Tip: Engage in Self-Inquiry
Ask reflective questions at every stage, from planning to data-based decision-making, to identify where equity can be strengthened. Our self-inquiry guide helps us and our partners ensure community buy-in, cultural responsiveness, accessibility, and health-equity alignment.
Rad Resources
Our framework guides every facet of our work: capacity screeners, participatory social mapping, accessibility reviews, readiness assessments, and culturally grounded training, ensuring evaluation promotes the common good and supports healthier, more equitable communities.
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