allblogs

Oct 15 2020

Narration Interrogation

Police (and some parents) know the secret to spotting a lie in a story: ask someone to repeat that story backwards. As it turns out, it’s a lot easier to concoct a false story going forward than it is backward because of the way we logically connect events in our heads.

This same technique can be used to help spot gaps in logic. Even if we’re not lying to one other (or ourselves) we may find some parts of the story that don’t quite make sense. This gap in logic is not uncommon because as humans we often will fill in the story because of how we are wired for narrative coherence as a species.

Narrative interrogation is a way that we can walk through the story of our program or service to help us identify the key elements that are present in most good stories and how or whether we have them organized (or have them at all). Unlike real interrogation, this is not aggressive or adversarial — rather a way to explore stories through inquiry.

Story Elements

Some of the key elements in a good story are:

Actors. These are your protagonists (the leads), the supports, and the chorus — those in the background. Ask yourself who the main actors are in each scene of the story (e.g., who has the problem that needs solving? What are they looking for? What is their motivation?). This is where using personas can be helpful to fill in the details about these characters.
Relationships. How are the actors related to each other? Are they working collaboratively or competitively and do they need each other? Are there roles that individuals fill? Are there special qualities to their relationship (e.g., power, partnership, etc.).
Setting and Structures. Where are things taking place? Do people need a particular service or product in a specific setting or context? Articulating these will also help you to frame the way in which system structures shape the interactions between the actors and help contribute to or facilitate the problem (or solutions).
Time. Determining when things are to happen and how that temporal aspect shapes everything is important. Does timing matter? Does the amount of time matter? is the problem and solution one that is highly dependent on when something happens or not?
Arc. The last piece is creating some form of coherent story arc between them all. Tying them together helps us understand who is involved, what they are interested in or seeking, why they have the challenges they do, how they are going about things now (and how we could change that with an intervention of a product or service) and the ways in which that will be affected.

Together, this starts to generate a theory of change and helps us connect what we’re seeking to do through our innovation (service, product, policy) and what is needed by those we are aiming to serve.

Using the Method

Stories are told by people, not objects, so this is one method where speaking with individuals is key. Involve those for whom the story matters in the telling of that story. This might be customers or clients, service operators, managers, or founders; it depends on what story you are looking to hear. The aim is usually not to capture everything, rather keep it focused on a specific aspect of your innovation. It might be in use (customers or clients), the development (product team) and marketing, or in understanding the purpose relative to the organization (e.g. senior management).

Using an open-ended approach — free-form — ask people to speak about the topic using a story lens:

Start with the beginning: what is the first thing someone needs to know. This might be the choice to start the project, the moment the ‘problem’ appeared that required a solution, or even the backstory. This is something that the storyteller determines on their own.
Focus. Encourage the person to speak in a manner that focuses on the purpose, however, ask points of clarification when it is unclear what the connection is at different parts. Good stories often involve non-sequiturs and so do poor ones; it’s important to know which one it is.
Reflect back. Once the story is told, re-cap the logic of the story from front to back and
Go backwards. This is the ‘interrogation’ part of sorts. Ask people to retell the story backward from the end. For example, ask what happened right before the conclusion of the story and then what happened before that and before that. It’s similar to the reverse of A Day in the Life method.

What you might find is that the story has different descriptors, relationships, or emphasis when told backward. These allow us to see different configurations of the issues that are associated with the story. It’s not that the person is necessarily lying or keeping anything from you, it’s about the limitations of narrative in that it only works with one set of issues connected logically at a time. Going backward allows us to see things differently, expanding our view.

The interviews and conversations with those involved should be informal and relaxed and can go into as much depth as you want. Generally, this is an approach that makes for a good ‘coffee conversation’ of about 30 minutes. It also can be done remotely, if necessary. It can be done internally by staff associated with the project or externally by an outsider. If the story involves highly sensitive subject matter or material, it is best to use an outsider to the project.

Learn more from your program, your people, and your work with this simple, powerful method for design exploration and research.

We help with storytelling through data. Contact us if you want to implement this with your organization.

Oct 15 2020

The 2020 Election: A Little Context

I am a little stressed out.

In the US, voting in the general election has begun. My wife and I dropped our ballots off at the post office yesterday.

It’s not that I don’t think we have good shot of voting Trump out office, I think we do. But after the events of 4 years ago, I take nothing for granted.

If you look at the national numbers, this election shouldn’t be particularly close. But unfortunately, that’s not how it works. While not the likely outcome, Trump still has the chance for an upset.

From Nate Silver’s election forecast on fivethirtyeight, this chart was pulled on October 14, 2020.

As a good number of you who follow my cartoons and receive this newsletter are not in the US, I thought I would provide a little bit of extra historical context. Cartoon Style.

The United States is a representative democracy that slants toward a republic.

The United States, like most modern nations, is neither a pure republic nor a pure democracy. Instead, it is a hybrid democratic republic.

Republic vs. Democracy: What Is the Difference?

The popular vote doesn’t elect the president and vice president. Instead the election is the result of voting by the electoral college. This how Trump won in 2016 even though he did not win the popular vote.

The powers given to southern slave states during the founding of the US continue to reverberate.

Altogether, the three-fifths compromise had a detrimental impact on vulnerable populations, such as the enslaved and the nation’s Indigenous peoples. Slavery may have been kept in check rather than allowed to spread without it, and fewer Native Americans may have had their way of life upended, to tragic results, by removal policies. The three-fifths compromise allowed the states to unite, but the price was harmful government policies that continued to reverberate for generations.

The History of the Three-Fifths Compromise

The uneven representation within our political system has existed since the dawn of our democracy. Even as men and women were treated as though they were not men and women, southern representatives were fighting for enslaved people to be “counted” in the formulas that established political power.

This unequal political power continued well after the fall of slavery.

Even the 13th Amendment, written to end slavery, gave enough wiggle room for southern states to suppress the votes of black southerners (or re-enslave through the prison system) while accumulating additional representational power in congress.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Language from the 13th Amendment

All 50 states in the US were established prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

All but 2 states (Alaska and Hawaii) were established prior to the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gave women the right to vote (white women).

Each state is given 2 senators. And the senate holds a lot of power, including the power to confirm Supreme Court nominees.

Washington DC is home to approximately 700,000, and the majority group in the district is black. Washington DC is not a state, and has no voting members in the US Senate.

Wyoming is home to approximately 600,000, and the majority group is overwhelmingly white. Wyoming is a state (it become one in 1890). It has 2 voting members in the US Senate.

These states were created as the country broke treaty after treaty with the indigenous peoples who’s ancestors lived on this land long before the first colonists.

Interested in diving deeper into US history?

One book I would recommend is Paul Ortiz’ An African American and Latinx History of the United States.

Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the “Global South” was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations like “manifest destiny” and “Jacksonian democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms US history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism.

An African American and Latinx History of the United States.

Why you see lines at polling stations.

I live in North Carolina, which is a purple state.

We have a governor who is a democrat, two republican senators, and a state legislature full of republicans.

Mail in voting here was not exactly easy, but it wasn’t impossible. We didn’t have to make an excuse, just request a ballot. And we had to have a witness sign our envelope before putting our ballots in the mail.

Friends in Maryland seem to have it easier. But some friends in the deeper south definitely do not.

I’ve written so far about just some of the history behind our country. Making it hard for some people to vote in order to gain an unfair advantage is simply an American tradition.

The United States is a Deeply Segregated Country

The United States is on track to be a majority-minority nation by 2044. But census data show most of our neighbors are the same race.

America is more diverse than ever — but still segregated

The US is know for its wide open spaces. And if you’ve ever had the opportunity to drive across this country, you’ve seen them. Where we live, and the people who surround us, shape our lives in so many ways.

I grew up in a red pocket of a blue state. It was a segregated (white majority) exurb about a half hour west of Baltimore. Many of the people where I grew up are now Trump supporters.

The vast majority would never consider themselves racist, even the ones who support overtly racist policies and laugh at horrible racist jokes/memes.

Living connected but very different lives

Neither racism nor segregation is just a southern thing in the US. Racism has had a huge impact in this country, north and south. And the north’s racist history has also shaped politics.

But in Vienna, as in hundreds of mostly white towns with similar histories across America, much is left unspoken. Around here, almost no one talks openly about the violence that drove out Black residents nearly 70 years ago, or even whispers the name these places were given: “sundown towns.”

Unless they’re among the handful of Black residents.

“It’s real strange and weird out here sometimes,” said Nicholas Lewis, a stay-at-home father. “Every time I walk around, eyes are on me.”

AP Road Trip: Racial tensions in America’s ‘sundown towns’

Building paranoia and fanning the flames

Popular right wing bloggers are doing their best to spread misinformation. And considering our internal disconnects from people who don’t think like us, and social media’s echo chamber creating algorithms, this misinformation is boosting dangerous rhetoric.

It’s a little too easy to draw parallels between current events and the McCarthy era red scare.

The far right has been shown to pose a far greater danger, so why are so many Americans afraid of anti-fascists?

Antifa and America’s revamped Red Scare

Whether COVID or ANTIFA, the president and his political allies are boosting the lies.

Politics have always come with a bit of “spin.”

But what the president has been doing consistently is not spin. It’s just plain lies. Lies that ramp up his base and trigger extreme actions.

President Trump, who announced overnight that he and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the coronavirus, has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and often contradicted public health experts and members of his own administration in their more grave warnings about the virus.

Timeline: How Trump Has Downplayed The Coronavirus Pandemic

They believe they are patriots

White supremacy and far-right terrorist groups have a supporter in the highest office in the country. When white guys wearing camouflage and holding assault rifle show up at polling places, they believe they are doing what’s right.

Even after the FBI disrupted an alleged terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the president keeps fanning the flames of violence.

Trump Keeps Inciting Domestic Terrorism

Oh, and we are still a country run mostly by white men.

You’ll likely see a bunch of rhetoric tying Kamala Harris to socialism in a way that won’t be done for Biden. And the language used to talk about Harris is horrible. I mean just a week ago Trump called Harris a Monster.

But as extreme as Trump can be, I think the insidious nature of misogyny in this country was more on display during the presidential debate. And then in discussions following the debate, which quickly shifted away from the constant manterruptions to the fly that landed on Pence’s head.

Yes, there was a fly on Vice President Mike Pence’s head during this week’s vice presidential debate. But before the insect stole the show, social media was already abuzz with comments about Pence’s multiple interruptions of his opponent, Senator Kamala Harris, and his refusal to stop talking when moderator Susan Page called time.

Page signaled to Harris to stop talking 13 times. She had to signal Pence 45 times.

#Manterrupting: Female academics saw their own experiences in the vice presidential debate’s gendered and racialized dynamics.

Vote

If you are in the US and reading this, please vote. Even if it’s hard. Even if it doesn’t seem like it will matter in your state. Please vote.

If you have family or friends in the US that you can encourage to vote. Please do. Don’t assume that everyone votes, because they don’t.

This election needs to be a referendum on how this country should be governed. And while I am not happy that this is an election between two old white guys, I do know that one is far better equipped to lead this country.

Oct 14 2020

Comment on Sample Size: How many questionnaires is enough? by Chris Olusola Ogedengbe

Amanda, thank you so much for this important post. Everytime, I waste a lot of time in determining what should be the appropriate sample size even after the calculation of the sample. Your post confirmed that I am within the required range because Of usually use 380 – 400.

Oct 13 2020

Customizing Reports for the Audience with Deven Wisner

When should we follow APA format? When should we not? Earlier this year I sat down with my good friend Deven Wisner about customizing reports for the audience.

Watch Our Conversation

During this six-minute conversation, we talked about Deven’s current work (he’s a managing partner, professor and student himself!) as well as the advice he gives to his own students.

His Current Data Work

Deven is a managing partner at Viable Insights in Tucson, Arizona. “I primarily work with organizations to increase their capacity for using data, but really, more importantly, get them excited about using data,” he says.

Teaching & Completing a Doctoral Program

I asked Deven what his advice would be for students who have to do different styles of writing in reports.

He said that a lot of what he shares is understanding the context of what they’re writing and what is most appropriate for their audience.

Tailoring Your Writing Style to Your Audience

Deven said that when you think about APA or academic journal writing, you need to understand that it has a distinct value. Understanding why you need to use AP style, for example, helps you to understand when that isn’t the right format.

He said that by building that understanding, it allows you to toggle in and out of that more strict, less conversational way of talking about data and findings.

Connect with Deven Wisner

Connect with Deven Wisner:

Website: ViableInsights.com
Twitter: @DevenWisner or @ViableInsights
Instagram: @DevenWisner

Oct 11 2020

¿Cuándo dejaremos de llorar porque en España no hay evaluación?

Un interesante artículo sobre el estado de la evaluación en España: ¿Quién mide el impacto de las políticas públicas? El otro gran déficit de España: evaluar la gestión de Isabel M. Ruiz

Algunas reacciones y apuntes al artículo:

1.Aparece claro ese mantra que en la comunidad evaluadora repetimos y repetimos como plañider@s, pero sin aparente avance: “España sufre una falta de cultura evaluadora …y sigue siendo una asignatura pendiente.”

2.Pero este mantra o frase parece que es contradictoria con la siguiente frase: “La exigencia ahora es máxima; ni la sociedad ni los organismos comunitarios van a darse por satisfechos con el mero hecho de “hacer cosas” de cualquier forma y con cualquier resultado.”

La falta de cultura evaluadora tiene su origen no en la falta de voluntad política, sino en la falta de capacidad de la sociedad para pedir rendición de cuentas (eso hace que los políticos no tengan incentivos otros que no sea hacer su voluntad partidista, sectaria o personal, en su “juego de tronos” habitual)

3.La evaluación y la cultura de evaluación son de difícil aplicación si no existe un marco de rendición de cuentas que lo faciliten: recordemos la necesidad de “responsabilidad, exigibilidad y evaluabilidad” en el post La evaluación busca responsabilidad

Así, bajo esos marcos de rendición de cuentas se dan/posibilitan las evaluaciones de la Comisión Europea (Fondos Europeos) y, en general, de los fondos de la Cooperación al Desarrollo (AECID/DGPOLDES, NNUU, Bancos…): otra cosa es que realmente sean útiles y sirvan para aprender/mejorar (la utilidad es otra historia a contar en otro momento)

4.En esta línea coincido con lo que indicaba el actual ministro de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones, José Luis Escrivá en su anterior papel de presidente de la Autoridad Independiente de Responsabilidad Fiscal (Airef), reivindicó en varias ocasiones el “déficit evaluador” de las políticas públicas como consecuencia de una “falta de cultura de rendición de cuentas, de asunción de responsabilidades y de transparencia”.

5.Los motivos por los que esto es así son diversos:

“con un desarrollo tardío de unas instituciones democráticas donde cobra todo el sentido la existencia de la evaluación de políticas”. Daniel Catalá, presidente de la Sociedad Española de Evaluación
“España siempre ha tenido una perspectiva legalista a la hora de enfocar los problemas. Nos hemos centrado en que la nueva política fuera acorde a la ley más allá de sus resultados, nunca ha habido un incentivo por parte de la administración para introducir una evaluación rigurosa”, Hugo Cuello, especialista en evaluación de políticas públicas.
Los expertos enmarcan este aliciente en la falta de “institucionalización”, que requiere al mismo tiempo de demanda (voluntad política) y de oferta (profesionalización). Cristina Monge, politóloga y doctora por la Universidad de Zaragoza

Sobre esto último, la oferta y la demanda, dos apuntes finales:

-La demanda no debería surgir sólo de la voluntad política, sino de la exigencia de rendición de cuentas desde/hacia la sociedad (que moldeará esa “voluntad” política)

-La oferta se adecúa al desarrollo de la demanda, tanto en cantidad, como en calidad. L@s profesionales de evaluación español@s tienden a sectores que demandan evaluación (fondos estructurales, cooperación internacional…), y en muchos casos han de trabajar fuera de España…porque en España no hay demanda, en España no hay evaluación.

Bueno la pregunta, en lugar de seguir con nuestros cantos, mantras y lloros, como comunidad evaluadora ¿quién, cuándo y cómo, podemos contribuir a poner el cascabel al gato? ¿cómo contribuir a ese impacto colectivo aunque no dependa sólo de nosot@s?

Y Lenon (muerto hace 40 años a los 40 años) y su banda ya invitaban hace tanto a la revolución, empezando por cambiar nosotr@s mism@s…