Community Psychology
Dominica McBride, PhD
Founder
BECOME
Flossmoor, Illinois, United States
Tatiana Cortes, MA
Community Advocate and Co-Creator
BECOME, United States
Coretta J Pruitt, BS (she/her/hers)
Founder
Love Thy Neighbors Network
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Location: Room 206
Abstract Information: Sociopolitical context is a core part of understanding the program and policy impact and how a program or organization operates and why. The field of evaluation recognizes contextual valence but the depth of a setting’s influence on people’s lived experience is understated and too often unexamined. One way that the context of people’s lived experiences can be captured is through stories. The stories that arise from the direct and indirect effects of societal structures, policies, and laws paint a clear picture of the influence of conditions on health, well-being, decisions, and behaviors. This panel presentation will elucidate the varied ways that sociopolitical decisions and surrounding settings have real and often detrimental effects on community members’ lives. Panelists, including a resident leader from the community, will share multi-level stories from one organization’s community transformation work with a south-side neighborhood in Chicago, IL. Through primary research, secondary research, and stories of contextual impact, panelists will take the audience on a journey through time and collective experience. The organization, BECOME, facilitates authentic grassroots community leadership and co-creates strategies and solutions to help communities actualize their collective liberation. We use community organizing, evaluation, training, and facilitation as tools to transform current realities of injustice and systemic obstacles to one of liberation and thriving communities. This panel is a result of this organization’s implementation of a community transformation model called Culturally Responsive Community Transformation. It is designed to spark, facilitate, and support collective social transformation within the boundaries of a neighborhood. As part of the first phase of this initiative, the organization has spoken with over 100 people that live and/or work in the neighborhood. Through this work, we use data collection as an intervention and a way to fuel community transformation. These interviews and focus groups highlighted strong systemic influence in the lives of community residents. This panel will: 1) discuss this transformation process, 2) share the sociopolitical story of the neighborhood, 3) highlight relevant results of this research phase, and 4) share a story from a member of the community who lives in the neighborhood and works towards community wellbeing.
Relevance Statement: Evaluation is a sociopolitical endeavor. Greene (2015) was explicit about evaluation being a “sociopolitical intervention” as well as alluding to the interdependence of evaluation and context. The field, in general, recognizes the influence of the ecosystem around an evaluand and the participants or beneficiaries of a policy. Culturally Responsive Evaluation, especially, asserts that cultural context has a major influence on participants, programming, policy, and organizations. However, there is a lack of examples of how systems and sociopolitical structures directly affect people’s lives, including those who are not intended to be beneficiaries or directly impacted. Clear and vivid examples will contribute to understanding the depth of influence and how systemic impact works. Without a clear understanding of the impact of conditions, evaluations and our conclusions can lack validity. Even worse, those who are negatively or detrimentally affected by a system or policy get no reprieve from structural oppression. The status quo continues. The last three years have unveiled the dire fact of persistent and fatal racial injustice in the US. Through the pandemic, the public was able to see the direct and indirect effects of structural discrimination with higher rates of Black people dying from the virus. After the murder of George Floyd and the civic uprising, the depth of oppression became even clearer. At the AEA conference in 2022, there were several calls for deeper understanding and action toward equity through evaluation. However, there is a lack of examples of how evaluation can directly contribute to equity. Understanding equity in evaluation involves various aspects of evaluation, the sociopolitical context, systems, and psychology. This panel will focus on the intersection of evaluation and the sociopolitical context for furthering the field’s cognizance of equity and providing an example of how the tools in the field of evaluation can be used to realize equity. While this panel, set of stories, and research focus on a neighborhood in Chicago, it is a representation of the plight and circumstances of many oppressed groups and segregated cities across the US and beyond. Through this multilayered deep dive, we will elucidate how structural oppression affects people’s lives as well as neighborhood conditions. In describing and discussing our transformation work, we will show how evaluation is being used to activate and bolster collective power and healing within the community. This panel will also help to strengthen evaluation practice overall, given the example of how influential conditions can be for the people who are affected by a program or policy. In deepening our comprehension of contextual impact, we can be in a place to collect more valid data, analyze more comprehensively and holistically, and develop more robust, responsive, and fitting recommendations. Through more contextually sound evaluation, evaluators will be positioned to create more effective and lasting positive change in society. References Greene, J. (2015). Evaluation as sociopolitical intervention, Spazio Filosofico (2038-6788), 87-95. https://www.spaziofilosofico.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Greene.pdf
Presenter: Dominica McBride, PhD – BECOME
Presenter: Coretta J Pruitt, BS (she/her/hers) – Love Thy Neighbors Network
Presenter: Tatiana Cortes, MA – BECOME