Evaluating CEnR Support: Findings and Dissemination from a Community-Academic Collaborative

Established in 2008 and based at Northwestern University, the Alliance for Research in Chicagoland Communities (ARCC).  ARCC supports CEnR by providing partnership facilitation, capacity-building workshops and one-on-one technical assistance, seed grants, monthly information and resource updates, advocacy for supportive institutional policies, and other activities as needed.  ARCC uses a collaborative evaluation approach led by its Evaluation Work Group (EWG).  EWG members include community and academic members of ARCC’s steering committee, as well as ARCC staff. The EWG has worked collectively since 2011 to develop evaluation tools, analyze data and develop findings and dissemination materials. 

A community and academic partner team will describe the ARCC EWG’s structure, purpose and iterative evaluation process starting with collaborative development of an on-line survey tool launched in winter of 2014 all the way through subsequent qualitative follow-up focus groups and interviews to be conducted in the spring of 2015.  The presentation will identify effective methods for enhancing collaboration, collecting quantitative and qualitative data, and facilitating participatory and multi-phased analysis processes.  

Key evaluation foci included academic and community partner capacity for CEnR, barriers to CEnR, and CEnR strengths and weaknesses.  Results from the on-line survey with 241 community and academic partner respondents and follow-up focus groups and interviews will be discussed.  The team will provide examples of the several dissemination methods used to convey findings. 

Presenters will further discuss from their perspectives as collaborating community and academic partners how this collaborative approach improved/enhanced evaluation results and utilization of findings. Future EWG plans will also be discussed.