9.3 Evaluation of Impact and Lessons Learned
Jackie Hendricks; Amy Lueck; Loring Pfeiffer; and Maura Tarnoff
Reflecting on Your Research
At the end of your research process, it’s normal to feel tired or get pulled into other work. For that reason, it can be tempting to skip a real evaluation of impact and lessons you’ve learned. You have done your research, learned from it, and taken action with it, but there’s still one task left: reflection.
Questions to reflect on your impact:
- What has the impact been?
- What new knowledge was created?
- What relationships were created or strengthened?
- What opportunities for policy or institutional change have appeared?
- How did public narratives about the issues and community shift?
- Were there any unintended or unexpected consequences?
Questions to guide your next steps:
- What did your community find the most exciting, validating, or meaningful? How can you continue to offer that type of experience to the community?
- What does this experience show about how the strategies worked or didn’t work?
- What new opportunities have emerged for advancing community solutions toward the world you envision?
- Whose voices weren’t represented that should be next time?
- What would you include again in a research process (what did you do well)? What do you need to adjust in future processes?
- What do you do now with your new knowledge?
Attribution
“Evaluation of Impact and Lessons Learned” by Jackie Hendricks, Amy Lueck, Loring Pfeiffer, and Maura Tarnoff is adapted from the Transformative Research Toolkit: Strategies and Resources for Community-Driven Knowledge and Action by Jose Richard Aviles, Victoria Benson, Justice Alchemy, Evan Bissell, Cory Greene, H.O.L.L.A., Eli Moore, and Jah Elyse Sayers for the Othering & Belonging Institute, used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. “Evaluation of Impact and Lessons Learned” is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
