MSC stories collect through group interviews

[Paula Magariños]

Hi everyone! greetings from Buenos Aires. 

I´m very pleased to start participating in this discussion list. Thank you for having me =) 

I have a problem to share.  My research group and I are currently engaged in the evaluation  of an intervention on  Gender Based Violence government subnational response services using the MSC technique. The main purpose of this evaluation activity s to find and sort out those changes that the results framework indicators cannot capture. The program has been implemented in a different part of the country, and we have to travel to conduct fieldworking with pandemic and budget restrictions. 

We are thinking in conducting group MSC interviews among members of the same service area to save time and allow us to actually gather most key stakeholders points of view. I have the feeling that we should somehow work with peer´s shared experiences rather than try to equalize peer inhibition. 

I wonder if anyone here has tried group MSC storytelling and how do you feel about it. 

Many many thanks for reading my question. I look forward for your answers. 

un saludo 

Paula

[Elco van der Wilt]

Hi Paula,

I did a MSC for a GBV program in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. We also had the discussion if we should do group MSC interviews, because of difficult travel arrangements of the participants. We ultimately decided again it as we felt in order to really measure those hard to measure changes that do not show through the framework of action indicators, we needed those personal stories.

We did however hosted a group event which we called collect your memories day, our program was built on creative therapy making use of music, dance and photography and there were a lot of artworks that participants could collect. That gave us an opportunity to gather all involved actors including donors and government officials to come together one more time and do individual MSC interviews with all beneficiaries. And immediately do a first peer review after so we had a first selection of stories. This was quite a bit of work on the backend but did deliver results while minimising impact on the part of participants.

Hope this helps. Please email me if you have more questions.

Best,

Elco van der Wilt


Elco van der Wilt | Society Fresh
el...@society-fresh.com

+31 6 155 444 96

Life is better when you make stuff

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[rick davies]

I don't understand this bit....

. We also had the discussion if we should do group MSC interviews, because of difficult travel arrangements of the participants. We ultimately decided again it as we felt in order to really measure those hard to measure changes that do not show through the framework of action indicators, we needed those personal stories.

MSCs are usually in the form of stories.

Are you sure you are talking about MSC,  as in most significant  change?

Regards, rick davies 

C

[Elco van der Wilt]

This is referring to Paula's question if group MSC interviews could work. As I interpreted this, It feels she means doing group sessions where you try to collect stories from the group instead of the individual.  But do correct me if I'm wrong Paula!

In my project, we decided against hosting such group sessions as we felt the nature of the project and the nature of our beneficiaries (GBV survivors) and the level of trust our staff had build up with the participants on a personal level, gave us the opportunity to get more insightful and significant stories if we did one on one interviews. 

That meant a tight logistical operation that was done during our last gathering with all the participants. Well worth it.

Best Elco

Op 15 nov. 2021 om 21:05 heeft rick davies <rick....@gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:



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[Paula Magariños]

Hi Elco, thank you for your answer and sharing your experience. 

I think that that kind of "festive" gathering could suit this project very well, although it would probably require some kind of programmatic frame.

I still need to give some thought to the different sorts of beneficiaries of this program. It definitely has an institutional kind of beneficiary (government response services agencies that should have strengthened their capacities) besides the main target population (women and LGBTI + people suffering GBV).  I wonder if the collective and collaborative reflection about it would give us a different list of stories. 

saludos!

Paula 

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[Elco van der Wilt]

Hi Paula,

Good luck with your project and MSC evaluation! What I always like about MSC is that with broadly the same set of questions you get a wide range of stories all relating to a personal experience of the involved actor. Be it beneficiary or donor or staff or management. Basically it sorts itself out and you can then collect those stories in different containers, either topical, sectoral or institutional. The collaborative and collective reflection you speak of, is then the real time analyses of these stories. So rather than getting a different list of stories, you get the same list but weighed and scored by the actual people involved. 

Email me if you want to discuss how we organised our ‘festive’ gathering.

Cheers Elco

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[Fiona Kotvojs]

Hi Paula,

 

I have collected stories from groups and it worked well – basically it was like the first round of MSC – story collection and selection all rolled into one. But I prefer collecting them from individuals as you get richer stories that better capture the extreme cases.

However, my reading of your email below suggests that your methodology isn’t MSC, it is more like a semi structured group interview or something else. I think it is first important to clarify the overall methodology and if it really is MSC.

 

All the best

 

Fiona

 

 

Dr Fiona Kotvojs GAICD

Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist

Kurrajong Hill Pty Ltd

 

fi...@kurrajonghill.com.au

Phone: 0448 453 422

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