Show notes
Asking the right questions is essential for accessing insightful information. Abel Koury from Compelling Analytics helps refine questions that drive your social enterprise forward. After multiple interactions with nonprofits, Abel was inspired to combine his experience in research design and data analytics with social justice. Non-profits and smaller organizations don’t always have the capacity to create great surveys that will collect and analyze the proper data to further develop the organization’s services. Abel says organizations might be doing a wonderful job, but their data does not reflect the scope of their work. Growing up in an “underprivileged town” with “economically disadvantaged immigrant parents” also shaped Abel’s perspective. “I know firsthand how it is to grow up in poverty. I take that with me where I go, and I try to use that as a lens in my work.” –Abel Koury Abel explained his thoughts on a rule of thumb for organizations. He started by creating an example of an organization with the goal of eliminating food insecurity. Focus first on articulating what you’re trying to achieve, and then sum up that end goal as a headline for a reporter. In this example, Abel said using “36% of kids are now able to eat three meals a day”. By focusing on the way you expect to present the story, and where you want the program to be when you get to the stage of sharing with reporters, you get clarity. Organizations can work backwards from that imagined headline. “Before you even start the program, you’ve got to think about what do you want the data to look like? What do you want to collect? How are you going to show your impact?” –Abel Koury Going deeper, Abel talked more about deciding what to ask and what information should be presented. Questions can limit results when the research design is lacking from the beginning. This led to Abel discussing how surveys should be created with the most diverse participant in mind. Questions inclusive to the variety of perspectives within your audience are an attentive and conscious effort. Defining a question’s context is equally significant. Abel gave a great example where people need to choose between 1-5, with 1 = not very fit and 5 = very fit. These choices too much room for personal interpretation, miscommunication of the question and flawed survey answers. Unless fitness is defined through context. For example, 1 = not very fit (eg. I couldn’t run a mile) and 5 = very fit (eg. I can run a mile with no problem.) As we continued, Abel got more into the rules of thumb organizations can consider to craft more effective surveys. He gave three solid rules any organization can utilize. I could really connect, since at Wild Tiger Tees, is also still learning to craft data collection, defining measures, and amplifying impact. Abel’s work with Compelling Analytics is building the future of proven impact. If you would like to learn more you can visit the official website or Abel’s LinkedIn. Read Full Transcript Adam: [00:00:00] Welcome to the People Helping People podcast, the podcast to inspire greater social change in the business world and give you ideas on how to take action. I'm your host, Adam Morris. And today I am here with Dr Abel Koury a personal trainer and founder of Compelling Analytics. A company which really helps you to ask the right questions to get the answers you need to drive your nonprofit or social enterprise forward. So I'm very excited to hear today. We have a treat. We're going to talk about something which has alluded me for a very long time, which is how do you write a good survey. And how do you get good information that you can actually use? We're going to get some really interesting practical information here, so I'm excited to dive in. So, Abel, welcome on the podcast. Abel: [00:00:48] Thanks so much for having me. Adam: [00:00:49] I'd love to hear a little bit about the journey that led up to compelling analytics. Abel: [00:00:54] Yeah, that'd be a, a long story, but I will try to shorten it for you. So compelling analytics was really born out of the idea that I could take my knowledge of good research design and my background in data analytics and combine that with my social justice, you know, sort of bleeding heart. And it really helped nonprofits who have this sort of content knowledge or smaller organizations that don't necessarily have the capacity or maybe necessarily the expertise on how to create, you know, good surveys collect good data and analyze it effectively in order to continue to, you know, win grants and do really good evidence based research. So it was just kind of a long process of seeing that at different organizations. I had worked at a, there seems to be this need for taking data, collecting good data, and then telling really good stories it. Adam: [00:01:43] Wonderful. So you started off and you got your doctorate in psychology, Abel: [00:01:48] developmental psychology, Adam: [00:01:49] cool And then you worked as a professor for a number of years. This is, so you've got to ask some really good questions and do some research into this. Abel: [00:01:57] I did. I taught research methods for psychology undergraduate students, which was not their favorite course. But we did talk about how to be a good consumer of research. So it's spent many years honing the sort of craft of what, what does really good research look like, and how do you collect really good data. Adam: [00:02:12] very Abel: [00:02:13] cool. Adam: [00:02:14] How did you shift from that to looking at companies that are making a social impact? Abel: [00:02:18] Oh, that's that's a great question. I always say that I, I can't really separate the person that I am from the work that I do. So as a person who grew up in a rural, you know, small underprivileged town economically disadvantaged with immigrant parents, in, in like the worst possible schools. I truly understand what it means to feel like you have to climb the social ladder or the educational ladder without much help at all. And so because I know, you know, firsthand how it is to grow up in poverty, I really, I take that with me where I go and I try to use that as a lens in my work and also to, you know, to look at organizations that are trying to make things better for folks like me. And you know, like I feel drawn to that cause Adam: [00:02:59] Very cool. Sounds like a very interesting story growing up and just kind of experiencing what it's like firsthand. Abel: [00:03:07] Yeah, I you know, I mean, if there is a silver lining, I will say that I, I feel very much like I can help give a voice to folks who would not necessarily have a voice or a place at the table. And I, and because I can do that, I feel like I, you know, I try to use my privilege for good. Adam: [00:03:21] Very cool. Awesome. And so now tell me a little bit, when did a compelling analytic start? Abel: [00:03:26] Well, it started in my mind like 10 years ago, but it started as an actual you know, something that you could site or a search online in November of 2019. My website actually is going live today after many painstaking hours figuring out Squarespace. Thank you, Squarespace. For, you know, allowing me to learn how to make it, a website by myself. Adam: [00:03:44] That's a great plug for Squarespace, Abel: [00:03:45] Yeah, I know. I actually, I don't get paid from Squarespace with Squarespace. If you would like to pay me that would be wonderful. Adam: [00:03:50] Great. Cool. And tell me a little bit, so you, you mentioned that the difficulties that, that you see nonprofits are facing, but let's talk about that a little bit more specifically. So can you describe a typical scenario that like a nonprofit would struggle with? Abel: [00:04:06] Absolutely. So I've worked across a variety of different sectors either at the nonprofit in particular or small organizations without like a bunch of capacity or even for. Profit enterprises where we were partnering with nonprofits. And it seems like there are some core things that happen in nonprofits because the, the hearts are huge and folks are trying to do so many things. Many times they're trying to do them under budget or under staffed. So you know, without the big sort of capacity or like a dedicated, for instance, data person, like a person who actually has spent some time thinking about. You know, survey design and how to collect data. So thinking about the end in mind, a lot of times I'm, I would be either with nonprofits or working with them, and they had gotten kind of far down the line of this wonderful program that was I, that they knew was working. Like the children knew, everybody knew it was working. But. The data, couldn't speak to it because at the very four, you know, front where you have to start thinking about like at the very beginning, before you even start the program, you've got to think about what do you want the data to look like? What do you want to collect? Like how are you going to show your impact? Oftentimes, you know, without this sort of capacity or you know, you're sort of under the gun, are you being asked to do something you don't necessarily know how to do? You know, you get kind of far down the path. And that's what I kept seeing time and again, and I realized that's where I can make my impact. Adam: [00:05:24] Very cool. And that seems like that's something that's not really a core expertise. Like people generally jump in with a passion for what they're trying to solve and they don't really think about how am I going to tell this story to the world so that I can get the help and support and resources and grants that I need. Abel: [00:05:38] That's exactly right. Adam: [00:05:39] Very cool. I'm now looking at a UN looking at a nonprofit. What are. Some of the things that they really need to look at when they, they're trying to figure out how to click this data. Abel: [00:05:55] Well, I, I usually I tell folks to do this one thing. I say, when you are done with your with your study, your program, whatever you know, whatever you're doing, let's say that you're, you put together a program to eliminate something like food insecurity, right? So like, that's your end goal. I asked them to think if there's a reporter who's asking you, tell me. What you did here, what, what's your main finding? I asked them for that headline. If you can think about what you want your headline to be like, this very pithy, one sentence thing, like, you know, 30, 30, 6% of kids now are able to eat three meals a day. That's your headline. If that's your headline, we know where we're going, right? So that's generally my first rule of thumb. I think ask them to think about, don't think about where we are right now. Think about where you want to be in the story that you're going to tell the reporter. Adam: [00:06:41] Great. And so then you start with that headline and you kind of work back from there of what data you need to collect. Abel: [00:06:47] Exactly. Yep. Because then that informs me in terms of thinking about how are they thinking about their impact? Cause like, you know, when you're so close to the problem you know, whenever you're trying to solve, you have so much knowledge that it actually gets in your way. And I I, I use this analogy all the time, but it's like when you learn to read. You can never look at letters on a page again and not read them right? You, the automaticity of it gets in your way and it's a beautiful thing, right? As you become an expert, you actually become more of a problem for yourself. So. By taking that like that, you know, here's the headline approach. Here's that big aerial view. You can, you can have a person who's like, you know, like me or someone who was like me and say, okay, that's awesome. I understand now how you're quantifying impact. Let's go further. Right? And then, yeah, we just kind of, we just keep on tracing all the way back to the very beginning. That's our, that's my strategy. Adam: [00:07:36] Okay, cool. Now when you, when you're looking at this and breaking it down, what are different components that you use to actually measure the impact. Abel: [00:07:45] Hmm. Do you mean like a survey, instruments, things like that? Adam: [00:07:48] Like do you surveys? Like, do you, do you have people put new systems in place for collecting data? Like what's the, what's, what's this kind of realm look like in terms of how do I measure impact? Abel: [00:07:59] Gotcha. Ah, that's a really good question. So it really, it should be driven in large part by the questions that you want to answer. So if you know that you want to say something about, you know, the number of children who are able to get, just to continue with the food insecurity measure, you know, the number of kids or families that you want to reach. And you want to see if your, your, your program has actually eliminated hunger. There's a couple of ways you can do that, right? You can say something like, I'm going to collect how many meals these kids ate, right? And you could do that with a survey that would be pretty simple. Or you can say, what does hunger mean. I'm going to do targeted interviews and focus groups, you know what I mean? Like there's a richness there. I mean, ideally, you know, you would have multiple ways of collecting data, but if you have to choose just a few should really be driven by your research question and you know, what you really want to be able to say. Adam: [00:08:47] And now you also do work with helping people craft surveys, which are a lot more effective. Abel: [00:08:53] Yes. I actually came up with some rules of thumb that are based on some examples that I've seen. We're folks are just me. They're doing their best job at creating surveys and it seems like it would be really easy to just be like, I'm going to create a survey. I'm going to put like, you know, ten questions there and it should be great. And the, the problem is that. Data is a powerful thing, but it is only as powerful as the research design. Like if your research design is flawed initially, even if you have the best intentions, what you can say from that data is going to be off the bat, is going to be limited. Adam: [00:09:26] Now, I've found this time, time, and again, you know, I, I have no background in running surveys and you know, I'll attend to give back hack where you're kind of pushed up. Put a survey out and get some feedback. And you know, even with our social enterprise, while tiger T's, like we're, we're getting feedback on things and sometimes I look at the questions, I'm like, what are we actually asking? And I have no idea how to structure that. So I totally relate to this of a topic, which is like, okay, where do I even start? Abel: [00:09:52] Yes. And, and I, it, I think it like really can be overwhelming. My sort of like general rule of thumb, like the very big, biggest one is to write the survey from the point of view of the most diverse person who's going to take it. Like, so if I'm. You know? Okay. So a lot of the research, especially in psychology, will be done by a cisgender, straight, white males. That's just how it has historically been, right? So, if that's your vantage point, you want to write the survey, not for folks who are just like you, but for the most diverse example of, you know, of who you could represent. Right? I think that always allows you to capture a more, a richer portrait of your audience. It's like the first kind of rule of thumb Adam: [00:10:36] That's really cool. Abel: [00:10:37] Well. So for a few diffe…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
