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If things get better for your community will YOU get the credit? (11 Nov 14)
4 ways to answer one of the trickiest problems you will ever have to solve
You are probably doing your best to help your communities to have a greater say in the activities of service providers and in community issues.
Hopefully your efforts are showing results and things are getting better for residents and service users. If so, this is an important accomplishment, and it answers the question “Are things we care about improving?”
There is a second question, however, and it is equally important. “Can we take some of the credit for this improvement?” In other words, is this improvement because of our good efforts, or is there some other reason (or reasons)?
While at some level we don’t really care because we’re always happy when things do improve, no matter what the reason is. At another level we need to know whether our efforts have been effective. Otherwise we don’t know whether we should continue what we’re doing, make subtle adjustments, or change things radically.
In research terms, you need to know the contribution of your efforts to the increased community involvement. The word “contribution” is more appropriate than the word “cause”, because in the real world in which you operate, there are many factors operating at the same time.
Rather than trying to nail down definitive, scientific proof, in your situation it’s more appropriate to seek “reasonable confidence”, “persuasive evidence”, or “plausible association” that your efforts have increased community participation.
But how can you amass this persuasive evidence? Here are four, simple steps to conducting a practical and useful “contribution analysis”:
First, gather any numerical (quantitative) data you can to bolster the case that your efforts have made a contribution. Even if gathering numbers isn’t your strong suit, there are several important questions you can answer fairly easily. For example:
- Did community involvement increase only after you began your efforts? If participation improved before you even started or was steadily improving all along, then your case is weaker.
- If you began your efforts in different schemes, estates or areas at different times, did community involvement improve only after you began your efforts in each different location? If so, that’s persuasive evidence of your contribution.
- If you made more intensive efforts in some locations than in others, did community involvement increase most where you worked the hardest?
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