More Than a Phase: Storytelling in Research & Evaluation
OVERVIEW
Social Insights Research held a roundtable discussion with members of the Social Insights team exploring the enduring value of storytelling and community-based metrics in research and evaluation. Drawing from their project experiences, the team shared storytelling techniques and strategies and discussed how centering storytelling within research and evaluation can help us advocate for our communities in today’s turbulent social and political climate.
SPEAKERS
Dr. Zuri Tau, Social Insights Founder & CEO
Dr. Christyl Wilson Ebba, Research & Evaluation Manager II
Dr. Nidal Karim, Research & Evaluation Consultant
Dr. Win Guan, Sr. Research & Evaluation Manager
Dr. Yopina Pertiwi, Research & Evaluation Associate
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Hello and welcome to a More Than a Phase webinar. We are so excited to be back with you. We are here to talk about storytelling, and I'm so excited to have four members from the Social Insights team here to share about their work and their process. These webinars are an offering to the field and our community to share our process, how we're working, and just to engage with you throughout the year.
So, we hope that you'll engage with us, send us questions, and we'll go ahead and turn it over to the team. I'm Dr. Zuri Tau, CEO of Social Insights and Liberatory Research, and we'll hear from everyone else about where they're coming from. I'm in Atlanta. Win, I'll pass to you.
Dr. Win Guan (he/him) | Sr. Research & Evaluation Manager
Thanks. My name is Win Guan. I use he/him pronouns. I am a senior researcher and evaluation manager and I am based here in New Orleans. And I'll pass to Christyl.
Dr. Christyl Wilson Ebba (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Manager II
Hi, everyone. I am Christyl Wilson Ebba. I use she and her pronouns. I'm a research and evaluation manager at Social Insights, and I am in Kennesaw, Georgia on Cherokee land. I'll pass to Yopina.
Dr. Yopina Pertiwi (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Associate
Hi, everyone. I'm Yopina. I'm a research and evaluation associate at Social Insights, and I am located in central New York. And I'll pass it to Nidal.
Dr. Nidal Karim (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Consultant
Hey, everyone. I'm Dr. Nidal Karim. I am a research and evaluation consultant with Social Insights, and I'm on Muskogee and Cherokee lands in Atlanta as well.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Amazing. Thank you all for being here. We are going to jump right into it with our topic today. Storytelling has really become a focus as nonprofits have become more concerned with communicating their impact over the last 25 years. There's been several approaches to communicate our impact, and I'm just curious why you think storytelling has become more accepted in recent years.
Dr. Christyl Wilson Ebba (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Manager II
I could start. I think the thing that comes to mind for me is about, like, what the data holds, like, what is possible with the data that you collect and share. And I think perhaps folks are realizing that, you know, traditional methods don't typically, or can't, hold all of the complexities that are inherent in real life.
So when you think about specifically, like, nonprofit work, they're holding a lot of complexities. They're holding tradition, they're holding history and, like, contemporary challenges all at once. And all of that…it's hard to capture all of that in traditional methods such as quantitative data. And so I think there's a yearning for more complexity and to really understand the nuance of the way that the world is changing and how people are experiencing it. And storytelling is a way to do that.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Thank you. What do you all think? Agreed? Anything to add to that?
Dr. Nidal Karim (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Consultant
Yeah, thanks, Christyl. I want to add that…yeah, kind of piggybacking on what you said. I think about something that has always stood out to me over the years of working, both in, like, evaluation and research and in, like, doing programming is this idea that sometimes we end up doing only what we can measure. And part of, I think, this shift is really around what does it look like when folks are really trying to do transformative work. When you're doing transformative work, you are not just trying to do what you can measure. Storytelling has really created that opening in that space to be able to speak to the work, to speak to the work, to do justice to the work that folks are doing and not feel limited by the methods.
That being said, I also feel like I don't know that there's this dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative. I think what I am loving is that storytelling is creating an expansive space for us to tell expansive stories with numbers as well, or tying the numbers to the types of qualitative and other methods and types of data that we are bringing in and yeah, just having a more. Yeah. A more comprehensive, expansive way of speaking to what folks are doing and how and what change can look like.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yes. Thank you both. I'm curious about the role storytelling has been playing in communicating evaluation and research results in your work with your projects this year. Is there anything that stands out?
Dr. Win Guan (he/him) | Sr. Research & Evaluation Manager
I want to, like, expand a little bit on something Nidal said about storytelling as, like, an expansive way of doing this work, that it can exist for both quant and qual work. Something I've been thinking a lot about in the last several years and then especially, like, this past year is like, I think there's been more and more research and more and more understanding about, like, what connects to the heart and the mind and that there are potentially, like, different pathways, but also a lot of, like, overlapping pathways, too.
And I think, like, storytelling has been like this merging of what's traditionally been very siloed of, like, you know, perhaps, like, numbers connect to the mind, and stories connect to the heart, and they, like, quote, unquote, like, tug on your emotional heartstrings and that type of thing. But I also think, just like Nidal was saying, there's also been a lot more understanding that numbers can do that too, right. And also qual stories and personal anecdotes can also connect to the mind. So there's more understanding of that overlap.
And so that's something I've just been thinking a lot about is like what used to be very siloed approaches and even very siloed, like, job descriptions of communications, right versus evaluator versus a grant writer or so forth. That it's been really important for me to not only collaborate across disciplines, but also learn more from, you know, what works communication-wise. Even, like things like design and color and like all this stuff, like, they bring out the story, right. They enrich the story. So that's something I've been thinking a lot about this past year.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
That makes a lot of sense. And it's interesting because I do think, at Social Insights, we don't play into that dichotomy. Most of our project approaches are mixed methods. I mean, I think that is really unique and I think becoming more common.
I kind of want to get your opinion maybe on some of what you all have been doing and where you've seen this sort of approach be successful. I'm sure people will be listening to our conversation who might still be in organizations or, you know, settings where there is a focus on numbers and statistics as the highest and best way to answer a question about success or value. So I'm wondering if you can point to some examples of why that isn't the case.
Dr. Win Guan (he/him) | Sr. Research & Evaluation Manager
I'll give a super quick example that I think about a lot is when folks…I feel like, I don't know, in maybe the last five, maybe even 10 years. But like when folks started doing, I think they call it like social mathing with like numbers. When they're like, you know, instead of saying like, you know, “1 million people in Louisiana are X,” they say, like, “the number of people that can fill the Superdome four times” or something like that to like, you know, connect to the brain or the heart a little bit differently. So it's just like something I think about like, as a concrete example of like a different method to do it.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yeah, that's a good one. Thank you.
Dr. Yopina Pertiwi (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Associate
I don't know if it tied directly with your last question, Zuri, but I also wanted to expand what folks have been mentioning. And also the second question, it might be actually related to each other. I was also thinking about sense-making as part of our methods. It's not just we're not just communicating numbers or we're not just communicating qualitative data, but we are also…and it's not just communicating, we are in dialogue, right, with the people that we work with.
And so yeah, I've been thinking about like sense-making. And actually just recently, one of our clients, the people that we work with, share like a good news that, you know, like after one of the projects that I worked in with Charla at Social Insight, and they share that: “Oh, you know, based on the evaluations—that project that we did—you know, we made the shift.” You know, and if we talk about the number of people who mention about, you know, that trigger that led to that shift was probably not, you know, the majority of the people, right.
But it was a very important message for the organizations that they had to make that shift. And I think that was communicated during the sense-making. And we had so many dialogues with the organizations based on the evaluation and it was received well and they decided to make that shift, right. So I think that was also maybe tied to your last question about why is it important for the success of the organization that we work with.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yeah, that is a really incredible experience too, to see your work lead to such a big organizational shift. I see you coming off mute, Nidal. Yes.
Dr. Nidal Karim (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Consultant
Yeah, thanks, Yopina. As you opened up into sense-making, something I wanted to bring into the space, too, is to your point, Zuri, like, when you were asking the question of, like, you know, that numbers are almost like seen as like more impactful and so on. And it made me think of how, I think a big part of how we do the work is also acknowledging that storytelling, too, is not neutral. I've seen plenty of storytelling done where it is extractive. It is coming in and us telling other people's stories.
And so I just kind of wanted to nuance that a little bit that when we're talking about storytelling and this idea that such a big part of it is whether it's with numbers or whether it's stories, that the way we do sense-making, that the way analysis happens is really about lifting and creating containers…well, I would say creating containers where folks are being able to make meaning of their own stories and that what we are trying to do is then pull that together. Because, like, just even from a methods perspective, like this idea that, yeah, I can collect stories and do my analysis of it and put that out into the world. And I think one of the things from an analysis perspective, I think about some of our projects where we have…we turn it around, I think of work that I've done with Social Insights and outside of Social Insights is the value of that sense-making, the value of bringing folks in to be part of the analysis.
So yeah, that storytelling just in and of itself is not necessarily non-extractive, but like how are we doing it throughout?
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Mm, right. It's a tool and that tool can be utilized in a lot of different ways. Such a good point. Thank you. You know, we've alluded a little bit to how you all are using storytelling as a tool in your work and why it's important to have both qualitative and quantitative methodology when you're thinking about outcomes and evaluation.
I'm wondering if you could clarify how storytelling is different from evaluation. I sometimes hear people say, oh yeah, we're going to do storytelling instead of evaluation. Almost as if they're interchangeable. So I would love some clarity on why that is different.
Dr. Christyl Wilson Ebba (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Manager II
The thing that comes to mind…this is recent because I've kind of centered like storytelling as a practice in a recent project. And I think of storytelling as…I think of it as a process. When I hear of evaluation or when I think about evaluation, I'm thinking about outcome. I'm thinking about like kind of an end product. I think that's kind of the emphasis is like, what did we learn? Like after we've heard all of this stuff, what did we learn? I think when I'm thinking about storytelling as a process and as a practice, I'm thinking about, like, how did we learn it? Like, what was the process?
So as opposed to like the powerful part being the outcome and the “what did we learn”, I think storytelling, the powerful part is in the telling, is in the storytelling process. In the, like, what do we…how are we learning and how are we prioritizing the learning in these stories? How do we hear how folks are making meaning as they share their stories? And that's where like we can…that's where the dignity is and the care is. It's in the telling, as opposed to like at the end when you're synthesizing and putting things together to present to whomever. I think it…the emphasis is more on the storyteller and the process of them sharing.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yes, thank you so much. Any other comments on that one? How storytelling is different from evaluation?
Dr. Yopina Pertiwi (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Associate
I'm not sure if I would like…I'm necessarily like, you know, separating between the two. But you know, just because of how evaluation has been done traditionally, that it's very quantitative and it's very like, oh, they have…like related to what Christyl just said, you know, like, evaluation, whenever we hear the word evaluation, it's like what, you know, the KPI they say, right. Like, what is the performance index? You know, what is the output? What are the numbers that comes out of this project? Right. So there is such a negative connotation that is associated with the word evaluation itself. And we actually did exercises in one of our projects and that came out, you know, that those anxiety of just hearing, you know, the word evaluation that, okay, what are you going to do with us? Right.
We will not have numbers. Are we going to have…do we have to provide numbers output in, like, in the next two years? We may not have anything because they are still in the process of whatever the activities that they're doing. So I think part of, especially in that project, part of the way that we…part of the building trust process that we did was to: “We are not here to do that traditional evaluation or traditional learning, but we would like to hear your stories, right.”
So that's, I think, one of the things that we're like...so we were like, also, even in the team, we're like, should we change the name, the word evaluation at all? Should we use something else to ease people's anxiety? Or should we actually advocate a better connotation or meaning of evaluation, that evaluation can be done differently? Storytelling can be part of evaluation or can be a method of evaluation. We decided to, I think, the team decided to do the latter one. Like, okay, let's try to still use evaluation, but by advocating that, you know, Social Insights is doing it differently from what was…what has been done traditionally.
So I think, to me, storytelling is process. Yeah. A method, you know, as a way of learning or evaluation. But it doesn't have to be necessarily be separated from each other. And I think maybe we should advocate that, you know, different meaning of evaluation. But, yeah, that's me.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Thank you. Thank you. Really good points that you bring up, because part of it is knowing that people are coming from a different position. Evaluation is the work that you do every day. And often, I think our clients and partners, sometimes they may not have ever interacted with evaluators, or they've done it once or twice throughout their time with their organization or their entire career, and it just seems scary. It feels scary and unfamiliar. So I love that, you know, you were able to really think through this and consider what they needed to hear and also make it educational. And I feel like you're walking the walk, right. So that's the best example at the end of the day.
Any other comments on that question? I can move on.
Dr. Win Guan (he/him) | Sr. Research & Evaluation Manager
Yeah. I also want to lift up that, like, I think I kind of want to probe a little bit deeper about what we're saying when we say traditional evaluation. I don't think we use it as a shortcut to elicit this idea of evaluation, but it's not the traditional sense of evaluation. It's what evaluation has become co-opted into.
I think the concept of evaluation and the practice of it has just become really dry and really co-opted by capitalism, really stifled by capitalism. And what we see on a consistent basis with evaluation practices are the things, the components that produce the most return on investment. And that's what the field of evaluation, I think, has moved toward is ROI. And so then we go through the cycle of finding a new word that elicits a feeling of liberating ourselves from that thing. And I think in this case, it's evaluation that we are doing this thing that is not centering ROI, that it's more holistic, it's more nuanced, it's more relational.
But it is something that, like, we see in other veins as well, right. With like, moving away from words like monitoring. Right. Or like quality assurance, program quality assessment. Oh, my God. And then the worst of like, surveillance. Right. Like, people have also used surveillance as a word for evaluation, but we're moving more toward, like, storytelling and learning and so forth. And so I think it's like, I think it's exactly what Yopina said that like, we're doing things that are more holistic and more what evaluation is supposed to be and not, you know, what it sort of was co-opted to become. Yeah.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Thank you. How do we feel about this? I feel like this is a hot take. I have ideas, but Nidal is off mute. Let's hear it, Nidal.
Dr. Nidal Karim (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Consultant
Yeah. I am so gonna give my age away as, like, one of the older folks in this…I think I'm the oldest. I'm gonna give my age away. Win, as I was hearing you say, “Oh, what evaluation has been co-opted into,” I felt a reaction, and I think the reaction was coming from a space of, actually, the idea that if we look at the history of evaluation…so the word co-opted didn't land for me, mostly because evaluation was actually designed to be a particular thing. It is by design, historically, has been something that was…I actually was pulling up the old, like, kind of traditional definitions that differentiates evaluation from research nd there are core pieces around “evaluation is about making judgments of merit. Evaluation is about making judgments about effectiveness.”
And, traditionally, when we say traditional evaluation, right, if we look at the history of evaluation, at least in the US, it was very much about evaluators having a role in making the judgment, saying what has merit and what doesn't. And so, as you were talking about it, I kind of was like, “Oh, yes, no, it wasn't co-opted. That is exactly what it was supposed to, meant to be.” And I think this shift isn't recent. The shift has been happening over decades.
In terms of evaluators who are more rooted in social justice, evaluators who are rooted in feminist practice, in Indigenous practice, have been shifting the field and advocating within the field and building theory for decades. And so I kind of feel like where we are and what we get to do is in that space of all the folks who have done so much advocacy and theory-building within evaluation that speaks of actually what is evaluation and what does it need to be. And I think in practice where, for me, I have been sitting with and grappling with, is if evaluation is about, at the core, speaking to, like, effectiveness of a program or like, what about a program is valuable or working.
What are we pushing back on in that definition of evaluator? And for me, personally, what I keep coming back to is nowhere in there does it say that it is only us who can do that. And so I think the shift is in that piece around creating the container as an evaluator to support people, to be the ones who do the programs and the ones who are…who a program is supposed to serve—and be in service to—them being able to say what is of merit, what is working, and what is not working. And then to tie it back to storytelling is like, how are we creating the container for that story to emerge and for them to tell the story versus me as evaluator, saying what has merit and what doesn't.
And that's when I really love that you said the thing about can we nuance what we mean by traditional evaluation? And I think that's like a core shift that has been happening over decades. And I think that what we are elevating and stepping into and continuing to forge forward is what does that look like, how do we do that, and how do we push back on that traditional definition?
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. This is really making me think about a project that Miko and I have been working on, which is the roles in research assessment that is now a quiz that individuals and organizations can take to create a profile of how we're operating and showing up in our research and evaluation roles. And I think as evaluators with the limitations of the projects that we're on…because oftentimes, right, we're coming in to help an organization, they're telling us what they want and the parameters—while we can try and modify them—sometimes they are created for us. But, how we choose to show up varies over those different projects and even over time as we grow. And so when, you know, when I think about like the role that I play in, you know, may be different in three different projects, but I'm like constantly pushing toward those roles that are more liberatory, where I'm able to make space to be more of an accomplice, more of a servant, more of a supporter to the people that are ultimately…know more about this issue than I do.
Right. Okay. I'm going to move on to the next question unless there are other responses to these hot takes on evaluation, tradition, and new practice. Christyl, Yopina, anything to add to that? No? Alright. Thank you.
I'm curious about if you all think that there is research that centers storytelling, that uses that as like core methodology? How do you think that differs from other types of research that may use, you know, there's a ton of things, ton of other methods and you know, in-depth interviewing or, you know, focused on mixed methods. What do you think about that being a core central tenet of a research approach?
Dr. Nidal Karim (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Consultant
I have an initial thought on that. I was…as you were saying that, Zuri, I thought of how I wonder if the...I don't know that it's a difference, but like maybe do we do more…do we focus storytelling when what we're trying to do with the findings…like how do we want to use it?
And so it was kind of thinking aboutprojects where like we did more storytelling approaches. And what comes to mind is often it is when there is like going into it, there is a lot of intentionality and understanding that we need the findings for advocacy purposes or we need the findings for like some campaign work or fundraising. Like, like there's like a utility that is in addition to like understanding what's working in the program and improving and shifting. But there's an added on need around advocacy or fundraising and that often in those kinds of projects, like storytelling often becomes like a method that is much more responsive to those multiple needs. Yeah, that's kind of what was coming to mind for me.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Thank you. Any other thoughts on that?
Dr. Yopina Pertiwi (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Associate
I think to me, the first thing that come to me is who are we centering in this process? Right. In this research process? I think with storytelling, definitely we are centering the person who we talk to. And sometimes there are a lot of flow in it. And I'm thinking about research in general and not just very evaluation, that evaluation type of research, but like some research in general and like, you know, compared to the other types of research that I have done before Social Insights or before really, you know, embracing this liberatory research methods.
And, most of my research was done in like, academic setting. Right. Whether it was, you know, experimental or like even mixed-methods or like qualitative research that I've done before really using this framework or Indigenous framework. And even the Indigenous framework, I mean, I think depending on which place that, you know, that we come from or what type of advocacy, you know, that the community wanted to highlight, that is also not, you know, so there is like in, in the other types of research I think it's…there is always a boundary, you know. So the boundary is research questions. And, you know, the, like, the objectives and the research questions are not flowing, you know, like it is fixed, like from the beginning to the end.
So that's what we...so even if it's in qualitative research, we are tied into that boundaries that we are just looking for those, you know, the stories that fits, you know, the questions that we were asking for in the beginning. So there's not much of really centering to the people, you know, whatever the stories, their feelings and their experiences. Right. So. But with storytelling, we center on the people who we talk to in the interviews it is very flowing, very flexible. Sometimes some questions, you know, we modify questions. And then, also even the findings are not something like it's very grounded, you know, like, it's…it's not grounded by like theoretical, you know, ground, but it's really grounded by whatever the data that we are getting from the people that we talk to.
So, say I'm thinking about…yeah, that's how...what I'm thinking. Like, there is so much nuance. You know, another word, like nuance is coming again, you know, but like, it's just…yeah, the difference is who are we centering? Like, is it centering the researcher? Because we are the one who developed those research questions and we have….right, like as a researcher in, for example, in academic setting, that's, you know, my previous background is. So, like, we have a specific goal you know, like, I'm doing research for something, and that's my specific goal, and that's and that's why I developed this particular research questions. Right. And that's why I'm asking these questions, and I want to get answers, and that's for my publications or whatever. Right. But then in this case, in the storytelling, right, it’s centering the people that I'm talking to, you know, so it's not me. No, it's them. They decide where this story is gonna go, and I'm learning from them, you know, so. Yeah.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yeah. So, Yopina, you bring up some really important points, and my mind is all over the place because I am curious if you center storytelling in this research, how do I get my questions answered then?
Dr. Yopina Pertiwi (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Associate
We still have some guidelines, right? We have…we do, like, semi-structure with interviews in most of our research, but still. Well, we sometimes do not, you know, finish all the questions. Right. But we also, like, we typically don't interview just one person. Right. So we also can get, you know, responses to the same questions or to the questions that we could not get into one person to the other person.
So we might get, like, stories from different angles. Right. Different perspectives. And I think that's what is. What is beautiful about this process, you know, so we're not like, just: “Alright, we have these 10 questions. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Right. And then we have to finish it in, like, 90 minutes. And you have to answer all of this.” Right.
But, okay, there are some stories that are really important that we have to highlight here. So we also sometimes, okay, we have 10 questions, but we as a team also would agree which questions that we would consider them as the priority. Right. So if in case we cannot finish up the 10. So maybe there are, like, four questions out of the 10 that we really want to get into, that we really need to have answers from different perspectives.
So I think there are ways in that, but also not finishing the whole 10 questions is also a good thing because we can get in-depth stories and experiences from the people that we talk to. Instead of focusing on just answering those 10 questions, we focus on the in-depth stories and experiences from the people that we talk to.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Okay, thank you. And I have one more follow-up question for the rest of the group. I'm wondering how, when you are working with folks who may be unfamiliar with storytelling as a method or just are downright skeptical of it, how do you explain why storytelling is useful as a method? And yeah, maybe, maybe do a little storytelling yourselves about having to convince a partner or a client that this can give you some good data and some good findings.
Dr. Nidal Karim (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Consultant
Zuri, I love that question. And what that is bringing up for me is I wonder if it would be helpful for our listeners for us to actually say, like, what do we mean by storytelling as a method? Or because as we've been having this conversation, I'm thinking of how like there's story like, you know, Yopina, as you were describing, and it's like, okay, storytelling is like a method of gathering information. And whether that's an interview format or a group format or even using other mediums or storytelling as an approach to designing a full process. And so yeah, I was just thinking, I wonder if it's helpful for listeners to kind of understand like, when, what do each of us even mean when we're saying storytelling?
Because I could see being like, “Oh, storytelling. Like, do you just mean like interviews? Are you like, is there a particular way in which you're doing that that you're calling storytelling or are we talking about a broader approach?”
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yep, that's an excellent point. I'm wondering if…I'm going to call on you, Christyl, because I think you've been doing some really interesting storytelling work with families, which is a really complex approach with a client who is on board with that approach. And I know some of you also have experiences where you've been doing some work where the client has not been as familiar or on board.
So I'm wondering if we can have both perspectives and angles and get at what Nidal is bringing up, which is what do you mean when you are talking to your clients and participants about what storytelling even is, in that particular context?
Dr. Christyl Wilson Ebba (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Manager II
Yeah, I think when…if your client is on board, that is 90% of the battle. You don't have to convince them. And I think so…for a project that I'm working on, what being on board means is that the client understands that we are centering participants and we are centering stories. And they're open to being iterative, meaning that we, if, when we hear stories, if questions need to change, they will change. If our original learning questions need to shift in any way, they're completely open to that, understanding that the process isn't linear. And I think…so that helps.
And when, like, I think I said this before, when I'm thinking of storytelling, I'm thinking of it as process and the ways that it might differ from like in a typical interview is kind of in the intention, in the container that is set up. It's very relational. We're really inviting folks to bring their whole selves. In the project I'm talking about in particular, it fits because people…it's family work, and it might not fit every situation where you're talking about, like somebody who's talking about a training that they went through or that might not lend itself to what I mean by story work or storytelling. That might just be an interview.
But when someone is reaching into their history and they're bringing…calling in their ancestors and talking about how they've been shaped and how they're moving through the world now and really personal things that they've been through, I think there's a different type of container that you create for that. There's a different type of relationship. I'm not Dr. So and so here to take your notes and record your thoughts. I'm in relationship with you. I am bringing my full self as well. So you might hear something from me as well. Like I can come into that space not as a researcher, but as a witness to a story.
So there are grounding practices that are involved. There are a lot of consent. You know, we, as researchers, we ask for consent, but I think we're not just asking for consent to press record. We're asking, oh, that part of your story, how would you like to tell that? This is what I'm hearing. How do you…? We're reflecting that back consistently throughout this process. There's breath work, there's pauses, there's information that lives in the pauses. It's kind of like a poetry when I'm in that space, that is different from an interview where I have my 10 questions and I can…in that interview where I have my 10 questions, I may deviate. I may, you know, obviously be in the moment.
But I think when I hear of storytelling and kind of the work that I've been recently involved in, is really that wholeness. Is really…kind of gets into, like, a spiritual type of practice where they're bringing their whole selves. I'm bringing my my whole self. And that extends also into the analysis process as well. That feels a little different where it's…I'm not thinking immediately of what can I extract, like, what stories are going to be the best, what quotes are going to be the best, like, what's going to map onto this theme and this question? This story answers this question. I'm really honoring those stories. I'm sitting with those stories. I'm immersing myself in those stories and that's part of the analysis process. It's not straight to, like, “Let's see, how can we code this?”
So just in this recent project that we've been doing, that was the first step of our analysis was an immersion, was just everybody sit with these stories for week, two weeks, and think about what you're hearing and listen to the whole story, not just segments of it. And then coming together in story circles. So it's not just coding and categorizing. It's and that's a practice that we've learned from Indigenous story work. So we have our story circles and we're sharing not just what we want to pull out, but how we relate to these stories, how these stories relate to each other in their wholeness.
Yeah, I think I can stop there if there's any reactions to that, but I think that is kind of how I differentiate it. And our client understands that. And so, when we are in communication with the client, they understand our process. And so it's been an easy process. I think if the client doesn't understand and if you're having to do more work to justify story work as a process, I think the question you would ask is, you know, like, “What do you care most about? Is it you're just looking at the outcomes and that's what you want to do? I mean, you just want to know about the outcomes and you're not necessarily concerned about your participants? Then this is not the methodology.”
Like this…I think when I think of story work, I think of honoring the participant and honoring the stories and honoring the process. Not just like, what did you learn? But how did you learn it?
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Thank you, Christyl. That is, yeah, just really beautiful to think about how story work centers and honors people's fullness and our own fullness as partners in that work. And it is really beautiful when your client is on board and, like, ready and is appreciating that and maybe even familiar with it. I'm curious if you all have seen someone come along, but they started from a different place. Right. Where they weren't necessarily thinking that was the approach that they were 100% on board with.
Dr. Nidal Karim (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Consultant
I can share from the…I think sometimes…and it's so not so much like where they weren't on board. It's more where a client thought they were on board, but then we're making asks that were… kind of so, like, you know, where it's like, yeah, we want storytelling. But then they're like, well, where is the interview protocol? Right. Like, so I think sometimes even if a client thinks they're on board, there's some educating and advocacy that happens along the way of where we thought we were on the same page, but then the asks they were making of what they wanted to see made it clear that we weren't talking about the same things.
And so that back and forth of being like, “Actually, here's kind of our general questions, but it's not going to be….Or, like, we're not going to ask everyone exactly these questions. We are starting with these broad questions. Can you be okay with that?” And being able to talk through the why of that and why that's important.
And I feel like sometimes, even in this case, some of that was around being able to work with a client and be able to say, can you trust us and trust our process and know that we are…it goes back to that question you asked Yopina earlier of how do you still make sure you get the answers to the questions? And it's this idea that it's not a dichotomy. The questions still get answered. It is simply being able to understand that answers can emerge through nonlinear processes and that rooting back into Indigenous ways of thinking and doing and having a client come on board and understand. And, yeah, sometimes it is literally them being able to trust us and say, “Okay, fine, I'm going to let you do what you're doing and trust that we will have answers.”
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yes, yes. I love that. Yopina, you had something to add?
Dr. Yopina Pertiwi (she/her) | Research & Evaluation Associate
Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to agree and expand or maybe not expand, but yeah, that we haven't really talked about is that the trust building process right at the very beginning of whatever that we do is the most important thing, whether it's with the client themselves or with the people that we will be talking to, you know, that trust building process.
And like in Christyl’s example, you know, with the storytelling project, you know, like, that would not happen if the people that we talked to did not trust us. Right. Could not trust us with their experience, with a very, very, very…a lot of them shared, you know, very, very personal experience. And some of them, like, “Can you make this off record?” You know, like…and that happens in just a matter of like 60 to 90 minutes. That is, I think…and that comes back to, again, your questions really, like, you know, how did we get that? Those answers?
But I think the most important key is that trust building and it takes…sometimes it takes a long time, a long process, especially with a client or advocating what we do. But for us, that's the most important thing because we cannot do...We're in this project…Nidal and I and Charla are now in this project. We are still building like a relationship and trust building, like, you know, with a client. Because we cannot move forward without everyone feeling that they can trust Social Insights to do the process and that we can actually do the process together. You know, so it's not just us, but, you know, all of that.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yes. Thank you. I'm hearing a lot of words that I don't think get mentioned very often in our training. And I hear words like trust. I'm hearing words like ancestors, centering participants. These words are, at least in my training, these words didn't really come up in research methods or when I was learning about qualitative interviewing.
As we wrap up, I'd really love to hear about…if you could share with folks who are maybe just learning how to do this work, who are still students, who are still early-career researchers and evaluators, what are the skills? What are the competencies? What are the ways of being that you need to cultivate in order to show up for this type of work?
Dr. Win Guan (he/him) | Sr. Research & Evaluation Manager
I'll start. I think that so many of the skills are not the sort of, like, methodological things that we learned. I think a lot of it comes through experience. I think it comes from personal relationships of folks who have experience that can kind of, like, share stories with you and their wisdom and their experience of doing this work. I think, like, I think some words that come to mind for me is like, empathy. I think about, like, self-regulation. I think about, like, giving grace and receiving grace. I think about the immense amount of vulnerability that it takes for us to show up in this work, you know, authentically, especially.
And also, like, grace for others who are perhaps able to show up vulnerably or often times not able to show up vulnerably. Right. And having grace for, like, why that might be. You know, I think it's easy to say that we need to build trust in projects. We absolutely do. And the actual, like, process of doing that is really, really hard on all parties involved. Right. And that shows up very differently from person to person, project to project. And so I think, like, there isn't some, you know, unique keystone? Don't clip that—keystone for this. But there, I mean, I think it is this, like, just broader sense of, like, acknowledging that every project, every situation, every person will be very, very different and having the ability and the empathy to, like, show up authentically no matter what and just, like, sit in that space with other folks and partners through that process.
So, it's a lot of skills that, like, yeah, you're totally right. We don't learn. And it does come from experience and, you know, I think wisdom, too, from those who have done it.
Dr. Zuri Tau (she/her) | Founder & CEO | Social Insights Research
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. I think I'm seeing the hearts and seeing the faces of your colleagues. I think we all really feel that, that this is wisdom. It does…it is something that we learn in community, is what I hear you saying. Like, to learn these things, you can't be just reading a book or working on projects alone.
And, yeah, you all do it so wonderfully, and all of you are so wise and so skilled. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your wisdom with us and with our community. And we'll see everybody next time. Thank you.
