At YW Boston, our commitment to social justice extends to our evaluation practices. What this means is we believe in a transformative model of evaluation, an approach to assessment and analysis with the goal of social transformation. Our extensive suite of evaluation tools is designed to maximize both our and our clients’ understandings of where we are, where we need to go, and the growth we experience in the process of creating more equitable and empowering work environments in Boston.

Why Participate?

Participation has tremendous benefits for both your organization and for YW Boston’s mission. As a result of your participation in our survey, we will be able to do the following:

Improve and Tailor Program Delivery

Your survey responses will help program staff identify what is working and what needs improvement in terms of both facilitation and curricular design. We will also use findings from the pre-survey to inform program design and delivery to meet your needs as you work to improve the diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at your organization and in Boston more broadly.

Provide Organization Specific Reports

Each of our programs involve some debriefing of survey trends. Pre and post surveys give us the information we need to identify and showcase your organization’s successes, areas for future growth, and next steps. No matter the program, no identifiable information is ever shared.

Conduct Research and Evaluation

YW Boston continuously seeks opportunities to strengthen its service to its mission. To that end, we conduct internal evaluations to refine our measurement, reporting, and assess the impact of all our programs. Any external reporting of research findings is of aggregate trends, by broad categories such as the organization, sector, or program-wide.

Protecting You and Your Data

We recognize and care deeply about protecting your ability to speak openly about race and racism, in both the program sessions and evaluations of all YW programs. While there is always a risk, given the subject matter, that some questions we ask may seem sensitive or uncomfortable, we ask that you always do your best to answer each question honestly and completely. In addition, you may choose to skip questions, or to stop participating at any time.

To protect your individual survey results, please know that extensive steps are taken to protect you and your data. YW Boston has guidelines and policies to guide the storage, protection, and destruction of data collected in the course of program delivery, including individualized survey links and password protected computers and databases. The main pillars of our practices are listed below:

1. Only data necessary to assess program impact and answer research questions will be gathered.

2. Individual confidentiality and anonymity are of utmost importance. To achieve these, the Director of Research and Evaluation makes specific choices to protect you and your data by:

• Using subsamples of at least five individuals when sharing specific findings.
• When there are fewer than five respondents in a subgroup, only reporting on broader themes in the data rather than specifics (e.g. for three senior-level White employees, we might say a pattern we found, but not include any direct quotes).
• Using open-ended feedback to generate themes and patterns from the data for reporting purposes.

Questions and Feedback

If you have any additional questions, comments, or concerns regarding research or evaluation practices at YW Boston, please do not hesitate to reach out to Dr. Sarah Faude, Director of Research and Evaluation, through email at sfaude@ywboston.org.

Thank you! YW Boston is excited to partner with you in service of our mission of eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all.