4.2 Keeping Track
A.
Obtaining Feedback About Your Project
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B. Recording Meetings
A. Obtaining
Feedback About Your Project
Getting
people’s opinions about the issue your project is addressing,
and how well your project is doing to address that issue,
can be very helpful to the work you’re doing in the community.
Why Should
You Obtain Feedback?
Obtaining
feedback can help you to better understand a number of things:
- how
your project is perceived;
- what
the community really needs;
- how
to generate renewed interest and excitement in your project;
- how
to increase community awareness of who you are and what
you’re doing;
- how
to improve your program.
You should
try to obtain informal feedback about your issue and mental
health promotion initiative
from participants
and the broader community on an ongoing basis. This may be
as simple as having a casual conversation with a community
member or monitoring articles or editorials in the newspaper.
More formal
feedback - data that you can measure -- may be needed at various
points as well, and is usually obtained through personal interviews,
questionnaires and surveys. This information often forms a
part of the project evaluation, which we’ll talk more about
in the next chapter.
As you
go about gathering feedback about your initiative, you should
always keep in mind how you will actually use the information
you obtain. Nothing will be more frustrating to your participants
than giving feedback that is not used.
How Do You
Obtain Feedback?
Before
you begin asking others questions, you should begin by asking
yourself a few:
What
do you want to know?
Make
sure you questions are clear and framed in such a way
that the information you gather will be useful to you.
Whom
do you want to ask?
Make
a list that includes a variety of people you want to get
feedback from, so that you can be sure you will be getting
a wide range of input and opinions.
What’s
the best way to ask?
In
some cases it may be best to simply ask a few questions
informally, as part of a conversation, for example "How
did you find the meeting?" At other times, a more
formal method such as an interview or questionnaire would
be more appropriate. Be sensitive to the people whose
feedback you are soliciting by giving some thought to
what the best way of asking your questions would be. Have
you considered literacy level, cultural background and
language preference?
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For
the staff of the Friendship Centre who worked with the
in the Medicine Wheel program, using an informal, conversational
style was the best way to find out how the Elders felt
the program was going, and how they would like to see
it change.
If
staff had presented the Elders with a questionnaire,
they would no doubt have had little success in getting
their feedback, because many of the Elders would not
have been comfortable using a written format to express
their opinions, but were willing to express their thoughts
on the program through informal discussion.
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For further
information on asking questions, please see the tools
section at the end of this chapter.
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4.2
Keeping Track - B. Recording Meetings >
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