The AND Blog

You wrote a great survey. Now, will anyone answer it? Seven steps to get more (and better) responses, from timing your asks to closing the loop, plus the one mistake that quietly erodes trust with participants.

Tired of boring surveys and exhausting KPIs? Start here. What arts-based methods are (and aren’t), how they work, common pitfalls, and the ethical questions to ask first. A practical introduction for evaluators, skeptics included.

Good questions aren’t enough if your survey reads like a maze. Five structural mistakes that make people stumble, get lost, or quit, and the quick fixes to make before you hit publish.

Surveys aren't always the slam-dunk solution they seem to be. Before you sink time and energy into designing one, pause. In 5 min, this post can help you figure out if a survey is the right tool or if there’s a better way to get the insights you need.

Marathon surveys, invasive demographics, and forced choices: five red flags that make people skip questions, quit early, or just make stuff up. Here’s how to spot them in your own survey, with quick fixes for each.

Humans are a hot mess, and collage lets that complexity show. A step-by-step guide to using collage in evaluation: when it works, how to run it, what to analyze, and the mistakes to avoid. No artistic skill required.

Identifying and using the right tool for the project is difficult. How do you know which technique will work best?

Likert scales flatten how people really talk. Poetry slows things down so every word matters. This post explores how we use haiku, erasure, found, and open-form poetry in evaluation, from cutting through team jargon to co-creating recommendations.

There are infinite ways to practise evaluation, so where do you start if you want your work to be more equitable? In this free webinar with Mass Culture, we share how we practise, what we do (and avoid) to promote equity, and where we are still learning.

Interviewing for data collection is deceptively simple. This blog explores 6 interview blunders and tips for how to avoid making mistakes.

In qualitative interviewing, the data collection tool is the interviewer, not the guide. To get the vibe right, I get into character.

ow on earth do you ask another person a question? After about 500 interviews, here is how we decide when interviews are the right evaluation tool, what they really cost in time, and the beliefs that shape how we ask.

An interview is not a sandwich. But, it might be a corndog, a burger, or a charcuterie board. Here is how to choose between structured, semi-structured, and unstructured interviews, and how to run each one well.

Hand adults a box of crayons and watch them look for the exit. Yet drawing is one of the most powerful tools we use in evaluation. Here is how it works, when it fits, how to run it in person or online, and why the debrief, not the drawing, is your data.

More RFPs are asking for photos, but there’s more to it than point and shoot. How photo elicitation works in evaluation, choosing evaluator or participant photos, analysis, ethics, and how it differs from Photovoice.

This blog busts 5 myths about arts-based methods - demonstrating why creative evaluation could be easier than you think.