We recommend that arts companies use a mix of narrative and numbers when telling the story of impact. This means gathering two main types of data:
Qualitative data - this generally refers to the findings from observations, interviews and case studies (although once you code interviews, you can translate this into quantitative data - more on this later)
Quantitative data - this refers to findings from surveys, questionnaires, and economic proxies for impact (e.g. quantifying impact in dollar terms)
By using both narrative and numbers, you can communicate to people who respond to stories and people who respond to figures.
It can be time-consuming and takes a degree of expertise to deliver a robust and trustworthy data set.
So ask yourself:
What are we trying to measure, and why?
How will we use the data we collect?
Is a quantitative approach the best method to achieve what we need?
Is there an existing, validated survey we can use?
