Guiding Questions to Advance Equity in Evaluation and Research: A Process for Developing Inclusive, Culturally Relevant and Rigorous Methods

This resource provides context about the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s approach to ensuring equity in its evaluation and research efforts, insights into how the Foundation incorporated these practices into its work and ideas for how others can use this approach.

The guiding questions to advance equity in evaluation are organized in phases to cover all aspects of a study:

• cross-cutting;
• teaming; 
• study plan;
• methods and data collection; 
• analysis; and 
• share and use. 

The questions were developed in a multiyear process that included consultation with the Equitable Evaluation Initiative, staff retreats, a retrospective look at where Casey was already advancing equity in evaluation and research, meetings to edit document drafts, pilot projects to test the questions and efforts to familiarize new staff with how to use them.

The main report provides detailed information about key actions for incorporating equity into studies and what foundations should know. These actions include:

• setting aside time and space for the process;
• reviewing and building on how the team already uses practices to incorporate equity; and
• carrying out pilot projects to test ideas. 

The main report also shares additional resources for learning more, suggestions for preparing to use the guiding questions and examples of how to use them. For some funders, answering the entire set of questions may be helpful. For many, perusing the questions may be more useful, enabling funders to test the approach and see how it might fit into their work.

The online resource includes the main report and a landing page for the questions. Through the landing page, users can access the guiding questions as freestanding PDFs, which are interactive fillable forms. This enables users to navigate the document and the guiding questions through links in any order or number they find useful.

Click here for the full report and related resources.

Source: The Annie E. Casey Foundation