Describe a time personally or professionally when numbers didn't tell the whole story. What happened? by Asma Ali

2025-02-18 15:39:45 UTC

A lot of times at PRCC our programs do a lot of outreach with the community on a day to day basis. But when it comes to reporting we don’t capture a lot of those moments and it makes it seem like our programs aren’t as connected to our community as they really are

2025-02-18 15:40:17 UTC

I've done a lot of PrEP research in time, the story by the numbers is it works, it's effective, but as of today in terms of gay men, Black and Brown men lag behind in use compared to White men. None of the quant surveys really explain the stories I would hear from participants about what was going on in their lives, and the disconnect between that and why PrEP use just wasn't their no.1 priority.

2025-02-18 15:40:58 UTC

Often during site visits or grant reports our grant deliverable numbers don’t reflect the “progress” funders are looking for but we have pretty good amounts of success stories based on the outcome goals a community member had.

2025-02-18 15:41:15 UTC

professionally. Looking at CPS out of school time data, the numbers show that schools should have enough out of school time programs/opportunities for youth. The students most impacted aren’t represented and there are several “opportunity gaps”

2025-02-18 15:43:29 UTC

I worked for a youth program that surveyed 4th-8th grade student participants on their development of SEL competencies throughout the program, however, it was a long survey written at about an 8th-grade reading level, so while the results seemed positive, they weren't necessarily reliable because not all of the students were able to comprehend what was being asked or started to choose the same answer for every question since the survey was so long

2025-02-18 15:43:54 UTC

One that stays in my mind is IQ. Standard tests often do not accurately reflect an individual's accurate intelligence because of barriers related to vocabulary and other factors.

2026-02-24 15:30:43 UTC

At a time i was gathering feedback of employees and how satisfied they were with our overall performance as a company.

2026-02-24 15:31:21 UTC

During a program we were not given the full description of what numbers could be tracked and although the team was visually overwhelmed the numbers allowed to be tracked did not portray the actual work being completed. Additionally, the program manager did not allow for questions to provide clarification instead questions were seen as a fault in the work taking place

2026-02-24 15:32:00 UTC

The projects I have worked on that required qual data mostly needed to understand more about motivations or experiences driving a behavior such as smoking or prescribing a medication. These experiences or motivations are too broad to capture with a quant survey.

2026-02-24 15:32:11 UTC

I interviewed mentors about their experience in the program and was able to uncover challenges they experienced and why they did or didn’t engage in certain aspects of the program.

2026-02-24 15:32:13 UTC

In working closely with the Diabetes/Endo department for a project, we noticed that it wasn’t telling the whole picture to capture medication adherence, no-show rated and rising a1cs/blood sugar etc. without asking patients about the barriers they were facing to proper diabetes self-management. (insurance, transportation, etc)

2026-02-24 15:38:12 UTC

Within the Puerto Rican Cultural Center a lot of our work has been performing outreaches to the community inside Humboldt Park and neighboring communities that we service. In these instances, our data gathered is focused on the services they might need but also assessing their satisfaction with how we as an organization can further improve our relationships with the community.

2026-02-24 15:40:19 UTC

Many times, the methods by which the data is collected can be separated from the circumstances the data existed in. This takes away from the overall narrative the data is telling and can do a disservice to those observing the event in question.