Introduction
This brief, based on a presentation at the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation’s (OPRE) 2022 Methods Meeting entitled Applying Mixed Methods and Qualitative Approaches to Social Policy Questions, provides an introduction to virtual data parties. Data parties are an inclusive and equitable research method for engaging diverse voices to review and interpret data through participatory analysis and sense-making. The goal is to center and empower the people the research directly involves or affects and ensure multiple perspectives are represented in the analysis process so that researchers develop more realistic recommendations to better inform programming and polices.
Purpose
The brief educates readers on why and how to conduct culturally responsive and equitable virtual data parties that are designed to include community voice in a way that reflects their lived experience. The brief describes how to implement a virtual data party because information on virtual data parties, unlike in-person data parties, is not widely available.
Specifically, the brief:
- defines data parties
- provides strategies for designing and implementing virtual data parties
- offers considerations for federal agencies to ensure that the implementation of virtual data parties is culturally responsive and equitable.
Key Findings and Highlights
- A virtual data party is a time-limited event of 1-3 hours where diverse audience members come together to collectively analyze data in a culturally responsive and equitable way.
- Data parties are beneficial because they: 1) ensure better interpretability of results within community context, 2) sustain engagement with community members throughout the full research process, 3) increase the audience’s ownership of the data, 4) identify what other data may still be needed, 5) help develop more realistic recommendations, and 6) create buy-in for later implementation of findings.
- Virtual data parties allow simultaneous participation from people in various locations, providing geographic variability. They offer more flexibility in scheduling as participants do not have to travel to a central location, and the team does not have to plan around the availability of a particular space.
- There are various online platforms and tools that can help engage participants in different ways. Researchers should be thoughtful about engagement techniques as well to ensure full participation by the audience.
Citation
Jones, C. (2023). Culturally Responsive and Equitable Data Parties: A Method for Participatory Analysis and Sense-making in Virtual Spaces (OPRE Report 2023-208). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation.
Glossary
- Virtual data party:
- A time-limited event of 1-3 hours where diverse audience members come together to collectively analyze data in a culturally responsive and equitable way.
- Inclusive and equitable research:
- Collaborative research that embraces a range of theoretical frameworks and methods focused on democratizing the research process. It centers and empowers the people who are researched, examines power dynamics, and fair and impartial access to opportunities and resources in every aspect of the research cycle to advance equity for all people.
- Sense-making:
- The process by which people give meaning to data based on lived experience
- Data placemat:
- A tool to use for virtual data parties that displays qualitative and quantitative data in thematic groups.