CASE STUDY
Collaborating through evaluation partnerships.
What was the challenge?
Indigenous Business Australia (IBA) provide financial related services and support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
In 2020, IBA and Dr Kevin Dolman approached The Interplay Project to apply the Interplay framework to better understand the cultural and other deeper wellbeing impacts of services provided by IBA.
To develop a deeper understanding of the impact of their products and services, IBA's impact framework needed to be deeply rooted in an Indigenous context with Indigenous designed research principles at its core.
We applied the evaluation framework and indicators that were developed from the ground up in Aboriginal communities nationally.
How did we help solve the problem?
Applying our ‘shared space model’, we collaborated with lead evaluator, Dr Kevin Dolman of the Eastern Arrernte tribe, and IBA as partners, to design and conduct an evaluation in accordance with the IBA impact framework.
The IBA Impact Framework draws upon Interplay Project’s domains, indicators and their interrelationships to provide important insight into the drivers and pathways for change that customer’s of IBA experience as told through the economic, social and cultural stories of their customers. Importantly, this process empowers the ‘voice’ of the customers to drive future program design.
First we co-designed the framework and survey, then we developed the mobile survey technology and invited participation from IBA customers. Over 1,000 customers completed the survey over a 4 week period. Dr Dolman conducted subsequent interviews to collect further in-depth qualitative data. Interplay mapping was then applied to understand the interrelationships and pathways to impact.
Business Customer’s Interplay Map (Figure 5 - IBA Impact Report)
Looking at the data with Interplay Mapping
Explaining the Interplay Map
Looking at the lines between the ‘stones’ from left to right
Only statistically significant pathways are shown.
The higher the numbers, the stronger the pathway.
Positive values are proportional (as one domain increases, the domain it points to also increases or gets stronger).
Negative values are inversely proportional (as one domain increases, the domain it points to decreases or gets weaker).
These relationships show correlation and may suggest causation, but this must be confirmed with deeper scientific investigation.
What story does the data tell?
“This map represents the strongest pathways to wellbeing. It’s like all the data is shaken up in one big bag and only the strongest pathways are revealed. Starting from left to right, the map shows that IBA support is creating change for both customers and their broader communities with some powerful flow on effects. We can think of this in terms of ‘impact pathways’ shown by the arrows from left to right.
At the top of the map, the first pathway shows that IBA support and change strengthen literacy which improves culture and wellbeing. Stronger culture goes on to build empowerment and wellbeing.
The other impact pathway at the bottom of the map, shows that changes from being with IBA directly impact culture, empowerment and financial resilience which all create broader wellbeing benefits. Taken together, this map shows that Home Ownership through IBA is improving people’s lives with strong impacts on culture, empowerment, financial resilience and wellbeing.”
— Shez Cairney, Interplay CEO
“The IBA Impact Report is a strong foundation in which we can reflect on and also consider future pathways in creating skills development, employment and wealth creation”.
Hon. Ken Wyatt (Minister for Indigenous Australians)
Services
Interplay framework, domains and indicators
‘Shared space’ co-design of project, survey and tech tools
Developed and distributed mobile based survey
Holistic data analysis to identify pathways for change
Evaluation data displayed visually on an Interplay Map
Interplay mapping analysis to inform program design to optimise wellbeing outcomes
Download the report to read.
Watch the launch of the IBA report.
Do you need a framework to evaluate the impact of a program or service which is targeted to achieve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people?
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