Evaluation and Feedback

Centering disability in your evaluation practices is a way of authentically inviting disabled people into your community. Consider the following insights and how they might apply to your organization’s work:

• Use evaluations and feedback to engage the disability community: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes in Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice about how checking off the list of accessibility requirements in your spaces is not the same thing as telling disabled people that they are wanted and valued at your events.
• Convey your organization’s values: Genuinely seeking the advice, opinions, experiences, and recommendations of disabled people, compensating them for their time, and transparently communicating how you interpret, respond to, and implement their feedback is a way of communicating that your organization values what they have to say.
• Build a larger community: Centering disability insights in your evaluation practices demonstrates that you value diverse opinions and perspectives as well as the community is an important partner in your work.

Organizations aspiring to center disability in their evaluation and feedback practices should keep these ethical issues in mind:

• Acknowledge harmful history: Recognize that disability research has a long history of exploitation, particularly towards poor disabled people, disabled Black people, disabled people of color, Indigenous communities, and gender-nonconforming individuals.
• Prioritize informed consent: Always ensure that participants fully understand what is being asked of them in evaluations. They should have the opportunity to ask questions and freely give their consent.
• Compensate for expertise: Pay participants for their time and insights, respecting their role as experts in their own experiences.
• Advocate for evaluation practices that serve your community: If leadership or funders insist on specific evaluation methods that do not serve your community, take the opportunity to educate them about inclusive, accessible, and ethical evaluation practices that genuinely serve your community.
• Commit to community-led ethical research: Ethical disability research must be community-led, consent-driven, and rooted in justice rather than control.

This section describes best practices to incorporate into various stages of your evaluation procedures, in order to ensure greater transparency and accessibility, as well as greater community empowerment.

Design Considerations: When designing your evaluations, consider the following tips:

• Prioritize learning and improvement: Evaluation should not simply confirm your existing assumptions or satisfy external demands. Use it as a tool for improvement, actively challenging your own biases and working to create inclusive programs.
• Define clear goals: Your evaluation should have a specific objective. Clearly define what you want to learn, so that you can determine which questions to ask and to whom.
• Seek diverse perspectives: Avoid reinforcing biases or unintentionally ignoring the voices of marginalized groups. For example, if you only seek feedback from your regular supporters, or from your staff before they’ve received proper training on accessibility, you’ll likely receive responses that don’t reflect the needs of new or disabled audiences, potentially reinforcing the idea that no changes are needed.
• Make it accessible: Ensure that your evaluation process and tools are accessible to people with a variety of disabilities and communication preferences:
  • Consider various formats (e.g., surveys, focus groups, interviews).
  • Use a mix of question types (e.g., multiple-choice, open-ended).
  • Incorporate graphic elements (e.g., images, color coding, etc.) where possible.
  • Provide alternative formats like large print, braille, screen-reader-compatible documents, and alternative participation methods like providing verbal feedback.
• Provide language access: Offer surveys and evaluation materials in languages other than English.

Recruitment and Data Collection: You can involve more different perspectives in your evaluations through following these practices:

• Recruit diverse participants: Don’t just survey those who already engage with your organization. Reach out to people from outside your immediate network, particularly those whose perspectives are important to your goals, but who are not currently represented within your organization. Establish relationships with disabled community members, disability advocacy or service groups, and other networks.
• Ensure voluntary participation: Be mindful of how you recruit participants. Provide clear, accessible information about the evaluation and ensure that participants can opt in if they choose to do so. When possible, compensate participants for their time and expertise, either through financial compensation, tickets or memberships, or other forms.
• Provide accessible locations and timing: Make it easy for people to engage by offering various ways to complete surveys or provide feedback, such as during events or programs, or through accessible online platforms.

Data Analysis and Response

Finally, when analyzing and synthesizing the data you collect, consider the following approaches:

• Pursue inclusive analysis: Involve disabled people in the process of interpreting feedback and responses to avoid biases, and ensure contextual interpretations of data. Compensate them for their time and expertise in the analysis phase.
• Act on feedback: Evaluation should drive change. Use the insights gained to revise, improve, and inform your programs. Be clear on what changes will be made and how they address the feedback received.
• Close the feedback loop: Always communicate back to those who provided feedback. Show how their input has been considered and what actions you’re taking as a result.