Community Psychology
Jessica Shaw, PhD (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
University of Illinois Chicago
Chicadgo, Illinois, United States
Jessica Shaw, PhD (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
University of Illinois Chicago
Chicadgo, Illinois, United States
Megan Greeson, PhD (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
DePaul University, United States
Agnes Rieger, MS (she/her/hers)
PhD Student in Clinical-Community Psychology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
Location: Room 105
Abstract Information: Gender-based violence prevention and response efforts are often quite complex, involving multiple organizations (e.g., rape crisis centers, housing shelters), systems (e.g., medical, legal), forms of violence (e.g., sexual, domestic), stakeholders (e.g., survivors, legislators), and levels of the social ecology (e.g., individual, cultural). Evaluations of such efforts, then, require approaches and methods that can attend to such complexity and multiplicity. In this multipaper session, three teams will describe how they employed community-driven approaches and multiple methods to conceptualize, design, and implement evaluations of gender-based violence prevention and response efforts. While each evaluation project was carried out by a different team, they align in that each (1) was designed in direct response to the informational needs of those closest to the evaluand, (2) was driven and made possible by key researcher-practitioner partnerships, (3) relied on multiple methods to tell a more complete story of the evaluand and those associated with it; and (4) required attention to competing demands within politically-charged contexts and complex systems. Each evaluation team will tell the story of their projects, including how they approached and executed them, the role and value of mixed and multiple methods in their work, and lessons learned along the way.
Relevance Statement: Over the years, additional evaluation theories have been developed to support the development and execution of evaluations in increasingly complex conditions (e.g., see developmental theory; Patton, 2011). While there continue to be evaluations of static, clearly-defined programs, evaluators often find themselves engaging multiple stakeholders in politically-charged contexts to assess complex, cross-system evaluands. Evaluators may learn that their usual approaches and methods are no longer suitable nor able to tell the whole story. In this session, attendees can (further) explore the value of community-driven approaches that rely on multiple methods to evaluate complex evaluands in complex settings. By bringing together three different projects carried out by three different teams, attendees are able to see where there are commonalities in these approaches, including how the evaluations are designed and carried out, where challenges emerge, and how evaluators move forward. This year’s theme is the Power of Story. In this multipaper, we hope to illustrate just that. By telling the tales of three community-driven, mixed and multiple methods evaluations, we hope to demonstrate what is possible when adopting such approaches and methods in complex evaluations.
Presenter: Agnes Rieger, MS (she/her/hers) – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Presenter: Heather Steele, MS (she/her/hers) – Safe Journeys
Presenter: Melissa Engel, M.Div (she/her/hers) – Safe Journeys
Presenter: Nicole Allen, PhD – Peabody College, Vanderbilt University
Presenter: Jessica Shaw, PhD (she/her/hers) – University of Illinois Chicago
Presenter: Caroline Bailey, MSW, MA – University of Illinois Chicago
Presenter: Megan Greeson, PhD (she/her/hers) – DePaul University
Presenter: Megan Greeson, PhD (she/her/hers) – DePaul University
Presenter: Erin Hoffman, MA – DePaul University
Presenter: Kayleigh Zinter, PhD – DePaul University
Presenter: Shariell Crosby, BA – DePaul University
Presenter: Hannah Samuels, BA (She/They) – DePaul University
Presenter: Shadman Saquib, BA – DePaul University