Ways Forward

We hope this toolkit serves as a jumping off point for you. It is meant to share some of the evaluation practices that we applied, observed, or that our collaborators suggested were ‘better practices’ when evaluating strategies addressing rape culture and sexual violence on campus. What works best when evaluating is contextual and dependent upon the goals of the strategy, the participants, the field site, amongst a variety of other considerations. This work can always include more voices, be more intersectional and address more complex topics. Our recommendation is to start engaging with evaluation however your can. Whether that means, quietly examining your goals and objectives to yourself or developing a robust evaluation strategy with an implementation team.

This is the beginning of a process of sharing some ways of doing evaluation that are feminist, participatory, intersectional, trauma-informed, survivor-centered, and arts-based. However, we acknowledge that this is just a jumping-off point. There are many people doing this work in similar or complementary ways who have valuable insights and ‘best practices’ to share and develop.

When we begin thinking of, as well as employing approaches to evaluation that are participatory, trauma-informed, and survivor-centered we are creating a culture shift. Working in this way is effective because it provides an environment in which participants are more likely to share valuable insights. Importantly, it also lends itself to a healing-centered way of addressing systemic, structural, and institutional issues of sexual and gender-based violence.

The landscape in which this work is happening is continuously evolving, hopefully in positive ways. We invite people who read this toolkit to use it as a point of departure to integrate, build upon, and to continuously consider how to do this work in ways that support those at the front and center of the issue.

• What practices, policies or activities are embedded in this strategy that might be inadvertently reinforcing gender, race, and class inequality?
• Are you thinking about collecting data that will assess how the strategy is received by marginalized participants to determine if some groups (e.g., able bodied cisgender white middle-class women) are benefiting from the program more than other participants?
• If your sexual violence strategy uses popular culture examples to demonstrate points are you being sure to highlight the way that gendered and racialized folks are portrayed in the examples? (e.g., these often cut to the heart of rape myths as well as other myths underpinning gender-based sexual violence)

• Begin by asking yourself who knows about gender-based sexual violence? Was this strategy developed in conversation with these people?
• Ask yourself: what do I know about sexual violence and how am I positioning myself as an evaluator?
• Am I remaining attentive to the fact that knowledge produced through this strategy and the evaluation data being collected is contextual? (e.g., I cannot understand the responses I am getting as being universal; the results may be different in every context and for every person)
• Are you remaining constantly attentive to the potential risks for participants and placing their well-being at the top of your priority list?
• Is Knowledge being created about sexual violence co-created with the communities and individuals that have this knowledge? Is the foremost goal that the knowledge produced by the program and evaluation benefits survivors and the broader community? (see Survivor-centered and Trauma-informed Approaches to Evaluation)
• Are you being attentive to the fact that some forms of knowing are privileged over others? (e.g., be sure that you are building in alternative knowledge and that it is given equal weight to standard methods of evaluation such as questionnaires and surveys)