Without an intentional focus on equity, evaluations may not provide a full and accurate picture of how a program is serving participants, and may perpetuate disparities. SEAs can embed equity in evaluation by prioritizing evaluation approaches that empower grantees and communities to be full partners in the research, including helping design the research, interpret data, and shape how findings are used. Using an equity lens in evaluation is critical to ensuring that evidence is built from comprehensive data that is appropriately collected and analyzed to ensure that a subset of the population is not left behind and SEAs understand what works, for whom, and under what circumstances.
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Community-Based Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a research approach that engages community members as full partners at every stage of the research process, including shaping research questions and empowering community members to collect and analyze data. PAR disrupts historical power imbalances between researchers and communities, generating better research and knowledge. This approach recognizes that deep expertise lies within each community, making research done without community input incomplete and inaccurate. The Conservation Law Foundation’s PAR Field Guide includes guidance on setting up a PAR project, developing research questions and tools, and collecting and analyzing data.
Chicago Beyond’s Why Am I Always Being Studied? aims to level the playing field between researchers and communities during evaluations, moving away from historical power imbalances and protecting against unintended bias in traditional research relationships. The guidebook includes questions and considerations for researchers, community-based organizations, and funders to ensure evaluations reflect community needs, goals, experience and expertise.
Urban Institute’s Community Voice and Power Sharing Guidebook offers practical advice on partnership building, community advisory boards, community-engaged survey development and youth engagement. Urban has also created a guide for holding Data Walks, in which program administrators and service providers empower program participants and community members by sharing program outcome data or research findings with them. Data Walks give participants and community members an opportunity to ground the data in their lived experiences, shedding light on how and why programs and services are serving their community well or not.