Grab the cake, it’s time for a data party! Benefits of and how to run your own

So you’ve successfully gathered the data you need to evaluate your program. But how do you engage stakeholders and partners to ensure a thorough understanding of the results? A data party could be part of the answer!

What is a data party?

A data party is a gathering that allows stakeholders to increase their understanding of findings and provide input into data sense-making. A data party is a process of participatory data analysis with program stakeholders. During a data party, stakeholders come together to interact with and interpret the data and provide input into final conclusions and recommendations. This process often leads to different views and perspectives of the results to be discussed.  

Why host a data party?

A data party promotes a culture of participation and collaborative data interpretation. Often, evaluators collect, analyze, and interpret evaluation data with minimal program staff and program service recipients’ involvement, which can lead to gaps in the interpretation and a missed opportunity to gain their insights on the main findings. A data party addresses this gap and involves program staff and service recipients in interpretation and sense-making.  

One way of increasing stakeholder and community participation is through collaborative data interpretation. In program evaluation, it is difficult to implement a true participatory method as most projects have a limited timeline and budget for evaluation. A data party provides an opportunity for engagement to groups that are often left out of discussions.  

Engaging stakeholders in data interpretation enhances the acceptance of the evaluation findings and recommendations. It also provides context and expertise that the evaluator may be missing and helps to ensure the evaluator’s interpretation and resulting recommendations are appropriate and feasible. A data party creates a platform to combine specific data points with personal experience and helps to better explain challenges in programs (e.g., where and why programs are falling short). The discussion during the event empowers stakeholders, provides a learning opportunity, and enhances engagement.  

How to successfully throw a data party

Like all other parties, each data party is unique. There are many ways to organize a successful data party depending on the project context, the type of available data and the stakeholder groups. We’ve included a few points below to get you started.

1. Purpose

Clearly stating the objectives of the data party will shape the event and will make planning easier. Identifying the purpose will determine the content of data presented, and the discussion questions.  

2. Invitation

Identify the different stakeholder groups you want to involve and the number of participants from each group. Having a clearly stated purpose can support this. Offer support so that all stakeholder groups, including program service recipients, can attend (e.g., cover travel costs, and if necessary, offer translation services, etc.)  

 3. Venue

Depending on what’s convenient within the project context, it can be organized in person or online. If it is virtual, provide the dataset or summaries in advance to ensure all participants have access.  

4. Timing

The ideal time to organize a data party is after you have collected and analyzed all the evaluation data and before you draft the final report. When scheduling, consider the availability of all participants.  

A data party can take several hours depending on the complexity and size of the evaluation. Since understanding and sense making of the data takes a bit of time, it is important to allocate sufficient time to give participants a chance to review the data completely and get the dialogue flowing across diverse perspectives. In a small project, a data party may be just 1-2 hours. For more complex projects with lots of data, your party may take 3 hours or more. 

5. Mix it up

If you have a large group of participants (more than 8), use break-out rooms to organize them into smaller sub-groups (4-5). Mix stakeholder types in each sub-group to promote the exchange of different perspectives. Have an evaluation team member facilitate the discussion and take notes for each sub-group.    

6. Data

Including the right data is critical for the success of a data party, so select your content carefully while considering the purpose of the event (e.g., data that needs verifying, outliers, etc.). Provide accessible information and prepare the findings in a way that is easily understood by all stakeholder groups for meaningful participation. Use various approaches to share the main findings to keep participants engaged (e.g., posters – where participants walk around the room in groups and look at data; data placemat – a document showing quantitative and qualitative data using visuals, graphs, word clouds etc.).  

7. Probe

If stakeholders disagree, probe and inquire to gather as much context to clarify how they have understood the data and where they are coming from. The purpose is to co-create meaning and explore new ways of looking at things, not to gather support for existing interpretations.  

8. Discussion Questions

Prepare questions in advance and facilitate the discussion within each sub-group. Sample discussion questions include:  

• What is the data telling you about (insert topic)? 

• What stands out for you? Are there any surprises? 

• What would you be interested to explore and/or discuss further?  

• What is missing in the data that you thought you would see?  

• What actions would you take as a result of these findings? 

If you have draft recommendations as a result of your analysis you would like to discuss with stakeholders, consider the following questions:  

• What response do you think is required here?  

• How viable are these recommendations? 

• Which feel most doable? 

• How might we best communicate these findings to decision-makers? 

9. Reporting

Don’t forget to write about your data party in your report – highlight your approach in the methods section, and in the results and recommendation sections don’t forget to credit ideas to stakeholders (you can use call-out boxes to distinguish findings).   

10. Fun

Try to make your data party fun and engaging.  Some ideas include offering food (can we suggest cake?) setting an energetic tone by designing a cool invitation, starting the event with a short but fun icebreaker, and sharing the evaluation findings in a creative way (also maybe with cake!). 

Have you organized a data party? How did it go?  Let us know your experience in the comments.  

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