Pushing for change

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Pushing for change.. data collection and analysis

• Dr Judy McGregor
• EEO Commissioner
• Human Rights Commission

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Data and the change process

• Why collect data in the first place? Let alone
  analyse it?
• Pace and quantity of information and access to it
  by technology has blurred the lines between fact,
  opinion, and rumour
• Rise and rise of talkback information full of
  dangerous myths (women have made it in New
  Zealand, for example).

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Value of quality data

• Allows for informed debate
• Community, group or individual exchange and
  empowerment through information
• Provides comparisons-gender, ethnicity, age,
  Maori, Pacific, refugee and migrant communities,
  disabled people etc
• Allows for measurement of progress over time
• Pushes back against prejudice and stereotypes

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What about NGOs and womens groups?

• Data is useful internally and externally for
• Reporting, CEDAW and other submissions
• to support funding applications
• to know who your clients are
• to work out what members want
• to examine trends and patterns (eg age of
  members).

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Ten top tips

• 1. Anyone can do it- small is beautiful and small
  and focussed is ideal. (You do not need to be a
  graduate in statistical regression)
• 2. Look around for help-partners, academic
  researchers, report writers. (Judy and David,
  example)
• 3. Do background research- someone has usually
  done something before you-All power to Google.

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Ten top tips

• 4. What is the question you want to answer? Need
  to work on what is called problem definition
• It may be a how many?, a why?, a when?, a
  who?, a what? or all of them
• Need the problem definition ideally BEFORE you
  gather the data.

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The Census example

• One over-arching research question
• How many women on the boards of directors of the
  top 100 companies in NZ?
• Problem definition is womens status in corporate
  governance

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Have data, will use it?

• Many organisations, groups and individuals
  collect/ hoard information for no purpose
• A years worth of household power bills- what can
  they tell you? What do you want to know?
• Five minute power bill exercise.

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Power bill exercise

• You have a years worth of power bills at home.
• What questions could you usefully ask in relation
  to the bills?
• The bills are the data. How can you use them to
  answer an important question?
• What is an important question?

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Ten top tips

• 5. Always brainstorm what questions to ask
• Whats new/ whats the current status of/ what
  are others asking us/ what are the gaps in our
  knowledge/ what would help us?
• Four Ws and an H- who, when, what, why,
  how???????

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Ten top tips

• 6. Dont ever assume that no-one else has asked
  the question before you
• To safeguard against research redundancy make
  sure that it hasnt been done before
• Ask around, ring experts, check internet and
  libraries.

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Ten top tips

• 7. Work out the best method(s) to answer the
  question. For example, how many women on the
  board involves counting why there are so few
  women on the board - could involve interviews and
  surveys
• Consider using more than one method because too
  much of one approach will not give us an entire
  picture.

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Ten top tips

• 8. Ensure you are systematic. For example a
  years power bills means 12 months not 10,11 etc
• Need to adopt the rule that if another person was
  collecting they would collect the same
  material-apples and pears problem
• Use of categories to collect data (grid sheets,
  forms, electronic template or spreadsheets)

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Ten top tips

• 9. Need a system to analyse the data so you get
  results. What does the data show? What do you
  look for and how?
• 10 interviews of migrant women seeking work-
  standard questions.
• Analysis is a way of making sense to see if there
  are common trends, patterns, themes. From chaos,
  jumble and ambiguity to clarity.

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Ten top tips

• A common template that allows entry of
  demographic data such as age, country of origin,
  how they came to NZ, educational level, family
  status etc
• Details such as how long they looked for work,
  whether they retrained, did they suffer
  prejudice, which could be standard across the 10
  interviews.

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Ten top tips

• Add qualitative data-what the individual women
  said in the interview about their specific
  circumstances
• Value of interview is the rich, womens voice it
  can provide of their own experience
• Resonates with other women who agree, disagree
  (consonance factor or Womans Weekly)

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Ten top tips

• 10. Need to stay true to the data so that is
  persuasive, you can defend it, and you have kept
  faith with research participants
• For example, dont claim more than what is
  revealed. If it is 10 migrant women only you
  cannot generalise to all migrant women

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What do we mean by true to the data

• Common research problems
• Causation is very difficult to establish so do
  you mean correlation
• For example, is A caused by B or does the data
  really only show that A is linked to B
• Worsening child poverty caused by work incentive
  benefits or is linked to it?

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Ten top tips

• Keeping faith might mean showing back what you
  have gathered to the women you have gathered it
  from (Robin, Robyn, Robynne and Roban)
• Consent forms for publication
• Anonymity and confidentiality protocols
• Verification

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Plus one more tip

• Need to plan how to release your research
• Audiences, media, risk analysis
• How will you speak, who will defend, how to
  arrange a chorus of support
• If you go public prepare for aggressive,
  rottweiler questions and dismissive
  interviewers.

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Who makes the news? exercise

• Front page analysis- what is the question we want
  to answer?
• What do we have to collect to answer it?
• How do we analyse data collected?