PAN’s Research and Evaluation Treehouse

While research and evaluation are different, they share many similarities, especially when thinking about participatory methods. We think of research and evaluation like two different trees with different origins, intertwined in methods and analysis, that separate again in what they can tell you and how their information is shared.

PAN’s Research and Evaluation department has put together a Treehouse to share resources that can be helpful for both evaluation and research. Building on the tree metaphor – the Treehouse sits on the limbs between both the Research and the Evaluation Tree and provides a space for us to come together to learn and build our capacity in both of these areas. We will highlight new research and evaluation resources every six months that cover five important phases of work:

  • Fertile Ground: Supporting teams and processes
  • Seeds: Ideas and approaches
  • Sprouts: Planning
  • Sapling: Methods
  • Mature Tree: Analysis and knowledge sharing

Read more about how PAN’s Treehouse came to be!

Peer leadership in research and evaluation: A collection of videos and tools highlighting how important the meaningful engagement of, and leadership by, people with lived experience is in research and evaluation.

Negotiating information sharing in community based research: A blog post highlighting how the Making it Work Research team navigates different priorities like academic publications, ownership of data and transparency.

Making Allyship Work: Allyship Perspectives in a Community-Based Research Study: Read about our submission to the Journal of Indigenous HIV Research and how allyship shows up in the Making it Work Research Study.

The Basics of Community-Based Research: Part 1:  The first in a series of “CBR Basics”, this blog post shares some of the ‘what’ and ‘why’ about community based research.

The Basics of Community Based Research, Part 2.1: Community-based-research often addresses disparity, inequality, and inequity, and this post lays out definitions of each.

 

Participatory Evaluation Whiteboard Video: A short video describing participatory evaluation and sharing tips and tools.

Manitoba Community Event-Based STBBI Testing Toolkit: A toolkit developed by the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network to increase access to STBBI testing in community.

Researcher’s Handbook: This handbook is built on the experiences of Peer Researchers and is a guide for research teams to meaningfully engage with people with lived experience. It includes topics like recruitment, onboarding, and supporting Peer Researchers.

Balancing Rigor and Relevance in literature review: Development of Guiding Principles and Practices for People with Lived and Living Experience in Community Based Organizations: Literature reviews are often an important step at the beginning of a project, but there are challenges that make them responsive to community. This blog post describes a unique approach that PHSA’s Collective Impact Network took to a literature review.

Reciprocity in Research, Part 1 – Supporting Community Experts Participating in the SHAWNA Project. The main objective of the SHAWNA Project is to understand the factors that shape access to HIV care and sexual and reproductive health among women living with HIV. The SHAWNA Project includes quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (narrative interviews, focus groups, arts-based methods) approaches.

Strong Connections: Community and Researchers Working Together: Here we highlight a series of resources that can help both organizations and researchers think through what to do and how to work together when working together on research. 

From Theory to Practice: The Challenges and Opportunities of Doing Participatory Evaluation: This blog post details PAN’s experience with participatory evaluation and shares recommendations and resources to help teams understand how to engage in participatory evaluation.

Qualitative Coding Resources: Visit this page for a host of resources about qualitative data analysis, including videos about qualitative coding, and links to helpful resources.

Sampling for program evaluation using surveys: practical tips and resources. One of the most common questions an evaluator can encounter is: “Who and how many people should I survey to evaluate our program effectively?” This answer, while seemingly straightforward, involves a clear understanding of their program evaluation goals, and the methodology applied to achieve those goals.

Treehouse Implementation Science Guide: This guide is a primer to implementation science. It will help you understand the basics and get your implementation science research going.

Decolonizing Methodologies: A Conversation: In this series of videos Sherri Pooyak of the AHA Centre shares her wisdom about decolonizing methodologies and doing research in good ways with Indigenous communities.

Indigenizing Survey Methods: This blog post shares learnings from the Making it Work Research Team and their work to create an Indigenous Realist Evaluation Survey to understand why, when, how, and for whom community based services work best.

Decolonizing Data Analysis Methods A previous Treehouse piece explored Indigenizing Survey Methods. We continue the discussion with this resource which focuses learnings from Indigenizing data analysis in the Making it Work project.

 

Equitable online access for information sharing: These resources explore a community-centred approach to increasing digital access in your community and can inspire us to ensure our move to digital research and knowledge transfer/translation and exchange is as equitable and inclusive as possible.

Team Discussion Tool: Supporting Teams to Build a Common Understanding about Information Sharing and Data Stewardship for Evaluation Projects: A PAN-developed discussion framework that can be helpful for teams to talk about and establish a clear understanding of each other’s needs when working on evaluation projects.

PAN’s HIV Housing Toolkit: As part of the Positive Living Positive Homes Project, PAN created an online Housing Toolkit as a resource for people living with HIV. There are many helpful resources housed within the toolkit, and this blogpost helps highlight some of the most used.

Reciprocity In Research, Part 2 – Knowledge sharing and exchange in the SHAWNA Project. As part of SHAWNA’s commitment to reciprocity in research, several of the main ways that we try to connect what we do with community experts include: (1) collecting information on community expert preferences on receiving information about the study; (2) producing a newsletter two times per year; (3) summarizing research findings into infographics and plain language summaries; and (4) utilizing arts-based research methods.

 

Questions? Feedback? Resources to share? Get in touch!
Joanna Mendell, Director of Research and Evaluation, [email protected]