The ingredients, resources and skills you need to use this method
Step by step desciption of the method
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BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT METHOD SHEET This sheet may be reproduced in paper or electromic or any other form but please mention it was made by Chamberlain Forum Limited for Birmingham City Council supported by Department for Communities and Local Government.
| created: 2016-07-25 15:34:29 | by: admin | status: a outlined |
SWOT analysis is a tool you can use to share ideas about the big issues affecting a place or an organisation – and to understand how they may be linked.
SWOT Analysis is a type of 'strategic analysis' - a way of working out what are the big factors affecting the goal you want to achieve; and what the relationships between them are.
If your goal is the improvement of your neighbourhood, then strategic analysis is a way of looking at what things might stop you, help you, help someone else to help you etc, affect the resources available? Identifying these things and relating them will help you work out what are the important things you need to achieve (these are called 'objectives') and ways of working you need to adopt (these are called 'policies').
This method sheet is one of three looking at simple, but very effective, types of analysis. If you use the three together and with a group of people who know the area but have different ideas about it, then you should - after a few hours - have a very good picture of what the strategic objectives and policies might be to enable you to make the neighbourhood a better place to live.
You can do all three forms of analysis presented here on your own, but they are best done in a group of half a dozen people. If you have many more than that, you might want to split them into two or more small groups. Ideally, you want people from different backgrounds and with different skills and interests.
To do SWOT Analysis, you will need:
If you use all three forms of analysis, you will need at least 2 hours of everyone's time. If you do only a SWOT analysis it can take less than an hour. It could, for example, be fitted in to a regular meeting or committee meeting.
SWOT ANALYSIS
This is the form of strategic analysis in the toolkit with which most people are likely to be familiar or , at least, have heard of. SWOT stands for (your neighbourhood's):
1. Take a large sheet of paper and draw a cross on it so it is divided into 4 areas. If you are artistic, you could draw a picture of the neighbourhood in the middle, otherwise just write its name. Put an S in one of the areas; a W in the next going in a clockwise direction; then an O in the next; and a T in the last area.
2. Give everyone a stack of post-it notes and a pen and put the large sheet of paper on the table.
3. Group leader starts off by saying they have come up with one strength, one weakness, one opportunity and one threat (from talking to people, going through the minutes of meetings or just from their own head) and they stick a post-it note with a few words or a picture on to recall each of those four in the appropriate areas
4. Passing clockwise round the table, the next person adds a strength, weakness, opportunity or threat OR gets to tick one that has already been put done to show they agree with it. This process continues for 10-15 minutes or until people have run out of steam.
5. The group leader then asks four participants to take charge of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats respectively. Their job is to sort them out into groups so that related things are bunched together. They can use a bit a wall to do this if they want. Other participants join whoever needs a second opinion. They can agree to set aisde any that they think are in the wrong area. This part takes about 5 minutes.
6. The group re-convenes to look at the groups of post its that have been put together. Go round the table to set if people agree the groupings (a grouping could be a single post-it or several that are closely related). Write the names of the groupings on the sheet of paper in the appropriate area. Top of the list should be the post-it grouping with the most post-its and ticks added together. This takes10 minutes.
7. The group leader then suggests one link between two of the groups in any area of the sheet. Everyone can comment on this suggestion; the group can reject or approve the link. Indicate an agreed link by drawing a line and writing the nature of the relationship on a post it next to the line.
8. Pass clockwise around the group adding links in the same way until there are about as many links as there are titles on the sheet or everyone is done. This takes about 15 minutes.
9. You now have an agreed picture of the current and likely future strategic factors (or issues) facing your neighbourhood and the links between them. You can use this as the basis for a plan or you as an input to firther strategic analysis (see Gap and SHEEP analysis, for example). If you can, put a version of the finished diagram on your website so that everyone can see and comment on it.
10. If you aren't doing any more analysis then you can use your completed diagram as the basis for the strategic objectives and policies in your plan. Policies will tend to be made in responmse to a SWOT factor and objectives will often come out of the relationships between SWOT factors. But there are no hard and fast rules.
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SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (current things, future things, positive and negative). In the case of a community neighbourhood plan you are listing the SWOTs for your neighbourhood. Be honest - don't try to make everything sound positive (or negative). Every neighbourhood has a mixture of both. As well as listing the SWOTs, the analysis is about drawing relationships between them. You should see after a while that threats can often be linked to strengths and opportunities to weaknesses in particular. But you can have links between factors in any area of the sheet. The group leader leads by example and sets out a SWOT of each sort to get the group going. They also suggest a link at the start of the linking go around. You need at least five people to work the SWOT group in the way suggested, but you can do it with 3-11 easily enough. You can do SWOT on your own or as a pair or in larger groups (with multiple tables) but you'll need to adapt the process accordingly. The process can take just under an hour. But it can easily take 2 hours if you want to do it at a more leisurely pace. Alternatively, if you are rushed, you can do a SWOT analysis on your own in 10 minutes. It won't be as good as a group version, but it will still be useful. Don't debate individual SWOTs (ones that no one else agrees with get voted to the bottom of the list anyway) and it is more important that everyone gets something down and takes part in the activity. But you should discuss the groupings and you should certainly be quite rigorous about making sure everyone is happy with the relationships between grouped terms. This is because a strategic factor is mainly important in relation to other things. SWOT factors (agreed groupings of post-its around a certain subject) tend to suggest policies (ways in which you need to do things), eg: if you have a SWOT factor which is to do with local schools being a strength in your neighbourhood then you might derive a policy from that of keeping in touch with the local schools and making sure they are informed about what you are doing. Relationships between SWOT factors tend to suggest objectives (things you need to do), eg if you have the SWOT factor above to do with schools related to another which might be, for example, the shortage of places to meet in your neighbourhood, then that might suggest an objective of getting one of the schools to act as the base for your community planning meetings?
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BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT METHOD SHEET This sheet may be reproduced in paper or electromic or any other form but please mention it was made by Chamberlain Forum Limited for Birmingham City Council supported by Department for Communities and Local Government.
| created: 2016-07-24 17:35:53 | by: admin | status: f published |
Focus groups help you to find the right questions to ask when you want to find out how a neighbourhood works…
Focus groups are groups of 6-12 people invited together so that you can find out information, views and what people think about a specific subject. They generally take longer to organise than 1-1 interviews and need good facilitation skills, but they can enable you to explore issues in depth and to really find out 'where people are coming from'. Depending on the participants, you can do mini-groups with only 4 or 5 participants, but you risk losing the interaction which is key to the process. (Interaction in a focus group means not just getting participants to answer the questions set by the group leader, but also dialogue between participants.)
It is important to understand that focus groups produce qualitative, not quantitative, information. They give you deep insights into how different strategies and priorities might work out in the neighbourhood, but they don't tell you which option is most popular. Focus groups can help you to ask the right questions or to make the right kind of proposal and to express ot so that people understand and support it.
Focus groups could be used to:
You can use focus groups at the start of an enquiry (to frame further surveys), during planning (to work out a strategy) or as part of the review of what you have come up with.
Focus groups can be used to find and contrast differences between communities or segments of the community in terms of how they think about a particular issue. For example, you could use focus groups of older people and younger people to look at the same local issue from different angles. You can present alternative views to a focus group by having two facilitators leading alternatives - in which case the focus group beciomes a very lively sort of interactive debate.
Focus groups can take a while to organise but they are a relatively cheap and quick way of engaging with people (because you are meeting with them in groups). You can use focus groups as a way of introducing people and building the local community network. Focus groups can develop to become part of the change you wish to create in the neighbourhood.
Group leader(s) - good interpersonal skill are required to lead a group successfully. Facilitation and observation are the two roles you need to consider. In the simplest form, a group leader can take on both roles - asking questions and steering discussion on one hand and noting the results on the other. This can be hard to do in practice. Variants include:
The issue - you need to be clear about what it is you want to find out about, otherwise the focus group will wander and you might not be able to make anything of the findings. It is better that the issue is too narrow (because you can extend it during the group session), than trying to cram too much in (because you are unlikely to get so much interaction, which is the object of using the method). Knowing what you want to find out about is, of course, not the same as knowing what you want the focus group findings to be: the method is open-ended; you can't predict what people will say.
Participants - 6-12 participants who can all communicate in the same language and are willing to take part for between 45 minutes and 2 hours. You will want a mixture of people inasmuch as that is relevant to the issue and the approach you want to take to it. Do not try and make the focus group 'representative' in terms of gender or ethnicity etc for the sake of it. What you are interested in is interaction - you need people to have some common ground to make that interaction fruitful.
The venue - is a significant factor. You need a neutral, but friendly place which feels secure. It needs to be accessible.; you probably want somewhere that is in the neighbourhood - but you could also consider somewhere outside the neighbourhood if going away from the place you are talking about will help the discussion.
Incentives - you need to consider how to thank participants and to compensate them for their time. In particular, you will want to help them overcome any problems that might face due to transport or care responsibilities etc
Refreshments - at least a hot/cold drink.
Preparation
Discuss and agree the issue or set of issues you want to use the focus group to find out about and how this fits in to the rest of the research you are doing.
Agree the kind of participants which it would be useful to involve and choose one or more people to act as group leader(s).
Find a venue that is appropriate and available for use at a reasonable time. You will need at least two weeks to recruit participants. The time of day and day of the week should be chosen so as to make it easy for the participants to attend. Book the venue for an hour (for a 45 minute focus group) or two hours (for a 90 minute focus group) - this means you can be in the room before participants arrive and leave it after the group has finished.
Recruit participants either by personal invitation or through general notices. If you do not know the participants, you will want to meet them beforehand. Focus groups need to be kept relatively small so that everyone has the opportunity to contribute and there is scope for discussions between participants.
In the Focus Group
Typically, the group leader(s) introduce themselves, explain why they have organised the group and ask the participants to idenify themselves so that everyone knows each others' names. It is really important to get everyone to the venue on time.
The facilitator asks a question and gets a response from each participant and then enables group discussion - sometimes asking supplementary questions - particularly 'what if..' type questions. The group environment feels less contrived than a 1-1 interview and there is scope for ambiguity, discussion, 'mulling things over' which doesn't really happen in most interviews.
The observer - if you have one - takes notes. They should focus on insights: ones they spot and anything indicated as an insight by the facilitator or one ofthe participants. The observer can ask questions to clarify or help them to make the record.
The process carries on until 10 minutes before the scheduled end time. The facilitator might then have a final go around of participants about the process; ask the observer for any questions; thank the participants and wind the session up.
Any claims for expenses and thank you cards with any incentives are dealt with after the session is concluded.
There are plenty examples of focus groups and how to do them available online. Most, however, apply to marketing or wider social research rather than to use of the tool in community planning. Some that are more useful include:
Community Toolbox at the University of Kansas - notes on Focus Groups and examples
The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement - notes on using Focus Groups
Overseas Development Institute - notes and Focus Group Discussion toolkit
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Key points to bear in mind: Language - you need to listen not just to what participants say, but also how they say it - what kind of language are they using; what is their body language; how sure do they appear; is there something else they really want to say? Bias - you need to take into account the bias which you bring to your observation of the results. There are plenty of examples of focus groups used in marketing which were effectively manipulated (consciously or sub-consciously) by the group leader to confirm whatever it is they already thought about an issue. False consensus - you need to beware of easy compromises. If they aren't challenged by the facilitator, focus groups can rapidly adopt unthreatening positions that no one really believes, but which participants will agree with so as not to offend each other. You don't want the focus group to become an argument in the sense of a slanging match, but you will need to make sure that participants feel it is OK to disagree. Self-moderation - bear in mind that when participants talk, they are not necessarily expressing purely their own views. They will tend to moderate what they say, according to the circumstances they find themselves in. You need to think about how you present the venue, the group leaders, the project and how you introduce participants to each other in order to guard as far as possible against people being influenced by external factors. Respect - you should ask participants to treat each other and each other's views with respect, but a focus group is not a confidential method. In practice, with participants drawn from the same neighbourhood, people will not behave as if everything they say will be forgotten when they leave. You should, at least, not identify participants as recognisable individuals (eg by using their name) in any write up you do of the foucs group findings. Facilitation - includes seeding the dialogue (with open ended questions); moving it on so that the issue you want discussed is heard properly; encouraging reality-checking and challenge; probing the details of what people say and making sure that it is intelligible to other participants. Facilitators may also need to act to ensure that participants can all take part meaningfully - though not necessarily exactly equally. The facilitator has to be objective and non-judgemental. |
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BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT METHOD SHEET This sheet may be reproduced in paper or electromic or any other form but please mention it was made by Chamberlain Forum Limited for Birmingham City Council supported by Department for Communities and Local Government.
| created: 2016-07-15 07:59:45 | by: admin | status: f published |