How the Site is Organized
Applying a Racialized Perspective to the Tools and Resources
Using The Web
Site Map

How the Site is Organized

The Evaluation Tools for Racial Equity website is organized around the typical stages that a community group or coalition working on racial justice issues might go through in planning, conducting, and using evaluation:

Each stage covers several topic areas, with guiding questions for each topic. These questions raise important issues for the group to consider. From each set of questions, the website user can find tip sheets, tools and resources that explore the issues in greater detail.

Tip sheets highlight considerations related to evaluation of community efforts to achieve racial equity and justice. They also sometimes direct the user to specific tools and resources.

Tools are checklists, worksheets, or short introductions to specific topics.

Resources are generally longer documents that provide more detail or depth on specific topics. They may be complete guides or full reports.

Stories are examples of real life ways groups have used evaluation in their racial equity and inclusion work.

Applying a Racialized Perspective to the Tools and Resources

Very few of the evaluation tools and resources on this website were specifically designed to focus on efforts to influence racial equity and justice. As such, they do not take into account special issues involved in evaluating such efforts. In many cases, a tip sheet will be linked to these generic tools and resources to give guidance in applying a “racialized” perspective. These tip sheets will highlight specific things that users interested in evaluating racial justice efforts should consider when using these generic tools and resources.

Here are some general principles to keep in mind when applying a racialized perspective to evaluation:

Be as clear as you can about your understanding of how racism, power, privilege and oppression affect the issues on which you are working. Understand the differences between individual, intergroup and structural racism and consider those differences in your understanding of what caused the issues you are working on, and thus, your strategies for addressing them. Always keep these understandings in mind as you decide your evaluation goals, questions, outcomes, processes and as you interpret and share findings. See especially Getting Ready (Stage 1), Defining your Work (Stage 2), Analyzing (Stage 5) and Sharing Findings (Stage 6)

Be inclusive in the process of evaluation, from planning to data collection to analysis to interpretation – include people with diverse backgrounds and points of view. See Getting Ready (Stage 1)
Collect and organize information so that the conditions and experiences of different groups, and the effects of the group’s efforts, can be examined separately. To the extent possible and relevant to your work, look at specific subgroups within a broader category (such as Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans and Cuban immigrants within the Hispanic population). See Analyzing (Stage 5) and Sharing Findings (Stage 6)
Be aware of and attempt to address factors that may limit the information from and about specific groups – for example, language barriers that may prevent some people from participating in focus groups or surveys; concerns about immigration status or fear of potential reprisals that may cause people to withhold, or provide incomplete or inaccurate, information; and items on administrative forms or questions on a survey that might be interpreted and responded to differently, based on the nuances of language and cultural context. See Collecting Information (Stage 4)

Understand that evaluating an effort to change the conditions and experiences of groups of people in a community, particularly around issues of race, power and privilege, is more complex than evaluating a discrete program and its participants – keep expectations for change realistic, continue to monitor community outcomes, and, if possible, use more than one way to assess how specific activities of the group appear to contribute to community change

Using The Web

If you want more information about using websites in general, see these links:

http://www.schools.ash.org.au/cerdon/faqs.htm

http://www.fcc.net/My_Frontline/Internet_101/body_internet_101.html

http://netforbeginners.about.com/