Is it wrong for an impact story to be emotional?
It isn't wrong for an impact story to be emotional, as long as the emotion comes from what actually happened and the story isn't asked to carry more than it can. Programs change people's lives in ways that matter to them, and describing that honestly is part of communicating what the work accomplishes.
The concern is a story used to persuade a reader of something the evidence doesn't support. Storytelling should never be a way to manipulate a reader or a replacement for credible evidence. A story that moves a reader and is also accurate, representative, and shared with the person's permission is doing what good impact communication should do.
How do we connect a participant's story to our data?
You connect a participant's story to your data by placing it next to the pattern it helps explain. Numbers can show patterns, change, and differences between groups. Participants' accounts can explain experiences, barriers, and motivations, and why a pattern may be occurring.
For example, a survey might show that participants who attended most sessions reported more progress than those who attended fewer. A participant's description of what made it possible for her to keep coming, such as a schedule that fit around her job, helps the reader understand that difference. (This is an illustration, not a finding from a real program.) The story explains the number, and the number shows that the story isn't an isolated case.
When the story and the data point in different directions, say so. That difference is often worth looking into, and it tells your reader you're presenting the full picture.
How do we choose which stories to tell?
Choose the stories you tell by asking which ones represent what participants commonly experienced, and say so when you use one that doesn't. The most dramatic story may not be the most typical, and a reader who later learns that may begin to doubt the rest of the report.
A few practices help:
- Look across many accounts first. Read the interviews, focus group notes, or open-ended survey responses as a whole before selecting individual stories, so you know which experiences were common.
- Include more than success. A story about a barrier a participant faced, and what the program changed in response, can be as informative as a story about an outcome.
- Protect the people in the story. Get permission, remove details that could identify someone who hasn't agreed to be identified, and keep enough context that the story isn't misleading.
If you're deciding whether a report or presentation should open with a story or with the numbers, Should we lead with stories or statistics when we talk about impact? covers that choice.
How do we say what our evidence can't show?
You say what your evidence can't show by stating its limits plainly, in the same place you present what it does show. A participant's progress after a program is real, but it doesn't by itself establish that the program caused it. Other things in that person's life may have contributed, and a credible story acknowledges that.
Professional evaluators are expected to do the same. The American Evaluation Association's guiding principles ask evaluators to communicate all aspects of an evaluation, including its limitations, in a transparent, accurate, and accessible way. A sentence such as "participants described these changes, and the program was one of several supports many of them had" is more trustworthy than a claim the evidence can't carry.
When the outcomes you care about take years to appear or are difficult to measure at all, How do I report impact when our outcomes are hard to measure? covers what you can report in the meantime.
The Grantibly perspective
Angelika's perspective
As sociologists, we don't see numbers and stories as competing kinds of evidence. Quantitative and qualitative data tell different parts of the story. Numbers can show patterns, magnitude, change, differences, and relationships, and qualitative data can help explain experiences, context, processes, barriers, motivations, and why a pattern may be occurring. Used together, they can provide a much more complete picture.
Organizations doing meaningful work often know their programs are making a difference but struggle to demonstrate that difference. We want to help them tell the story of their work with evidence, and we don't believe in telling anyone that everything is going wonderfully when the evidence suggests otherwise. A story people can trust is one that's honest about both.
