The presentation stresses on the importance of communication and different types of documentation

1. Documentation and
Communication
Capacity building for youth volunteers

2. What do you need?
• Has the ability to connect to and understand youth
• One, who youth can look to and see that they can move forward in their life
despite challenges and obstacles
• Physically active and has a balance in their life
• Has the ability to accept youth as they are
• Must be seen as potential and not a problem
• Has the ability to write
• Has the ability to talk
• How you say is more important that what you say
• Talking effectively includes listening

3. The Speech Communication Process
Speaker - Speech communication starts here
Message - Whatever is communicated
Channel – Means by which a message is communicated
Listener – The receiver of the communicated message
Feedback – Comes in many forms and must be understood
Interference - Anything impeding the communication of the message
Situation – the time and place of occurrence

4. Barriers to Effective Communication
• Misinterpretation
• Evaluation of sender
• Projection
• Stereotyping
• Arrogance and superiority
• Defensiveness
• Inarticulateness
• Hidden agendas
• Status
• Environment
• Emotions
• Differences in backgrounds
• Poor timing
• Personality conflicts

5. Conscious- Competence Model

6. FOCUSING
• Ivey and Ivey (2003) have identified seven areas
• Individual focus: Personal aspects of the client
• Problems focus
• Family focus
• Mutuality focus: Attempts to put both on an equal level
• Interviewer focus: You may have to disclose information about
yourself
• Cultural/environmental
• Context focus

7. Encouragers: Intentional listening
Paraphrasing: Active listening
Summaries: Help in organising thinking process

8. Active listening
• Listening to and interacting with the interviewee
• Achieved by:
- facing the interviewee
- maintaining eye contact
- responding appropriately
- focusing on what is being said
- not interrupting
- keeping an open mind

9. Acknowledging answers
• Can be distracting
• Will be heard on final recording
• Should be timely and kept to a minimum
• Non-verbal cues:
• head nodding
• smiling
• eye contact
• Paraphrasing
• Interviewee: When I was young, we would spend all summer in camps around the territory. Life was
fun; we would play by the sea and pick berries in the forest. It was hard too… I remember we would
have to haul fresh water every day, gut fish and always eat the same food! Happy memories.
• Interviewer’s paraphrase: You had a wonderfully free life living so close to the land; it involved a lot
of hard work too.

10. Body Language
• Facial Expressions
• Posture and Gestures
• Empathy
• Eye Accessing Cues
• Looking left and up: visual recall (recalling a visual memory)
• Looking left and centrally: auditory recall (recalling a noise or sound)
• Looking left and down: auditory internal dialogue
• Looking right and up: visual construction (imagining an image, not factual)
• Looking right and centrally: auditory construction (imaging a sound, not factual)
• Looking right and down: kinaesthetic (imaging a kinaesthetic sensation, not factual)

11. Build Relationship
• Stimulate self-exploration
• Check understanding
• Provide support
• Assist communication
• Focus attention on the client

12. 12The need for communication and documentation
• Communication and documentation is key for a successful project
• “If it is not written down, it did not happen!”
• “If you wrote it down, you agreed to do it!”
• Communication assures coordination of effort across stakeholders
• Agreement on how to proceed
• Tracking of progress
• Assure functioning interface between units
• Written documentation provides the “glue” that stabilizes components and unifies the
project
• Helps assure “end-to-end” thinking
• Show agreement on roles, tasks, schedule
• Provides proof of performance
• Reports & presentations set precedent for acknowledgement of effort and / or
discoveries

13. Documentation
• Documentation It is the process of communicating in
written form about essential facts for the maintenance of
continuous history of events over a period of time.
• The role of community members
• Role of facilitators and trainers
• Local ways of expressing knowledge
• Cultural factors
• Inclusivity
• Balancing multiple methods

14. Methods of documentation
•Archive and literature review
•Observation and note taking
•Interviews
•Photography
•Participatory video

15. Archive and literature reviews
• Review:
- existing reports
- studies
- videos
- photos
- maps
- documents
• Avoid duplication and wasting time
• Validate collected information

16. Archive and literature reviews: pros and cons
Pros Cons
• Documents group characteristics
• Elaborates upon history and
pattern of development
• Establishes historic presence
• Provides insight into ways that the
community has been portrayed in
the past
• Sources from outside the
community may not reflect local
perspectives
• Quality of documents will vary
• Access may be restricted
• Data may be inaccurate or an
incomplete representation

17. Observation and note taking
•Listening and watching
•“Seeing what we expect to see”
•“Seeing what we want to see”
-project evaluation
•Field notes

18. Observation and note taking: pros and cons
Pros Cons
• Low cost
• Includes impromptu remarks
• Records behaviours that may
escape other tools of
documentation
• Documents steps taken
• Can exclude some community
members
• Reflects researcher’s
perspective
• May not include context behind
statements or occurrences

19. Interviews
•Dialogue between two or more people
•Focus groups
•Structured interviews
•Semi-structured interviews
•Unstructured interviews

20. Focus groups: pros and cons
Pros Cons
• Collaborative problem solving
• Time-effective and cost-effective
• Places community members on
equal footing
• Flexible format
• Cannot provide same kind of in-
depth information as one-on-one
conversations
• Some community members may
feel uncomfortable speaking up
• Group think: agreeing on
popular ideas

21. Structured interviews: pros and cons
Pros Cons
• Comparability across a
group of people
• May not need to transcribe
interviews (less time-
consuming)
• May not reveal true
concerns of community
members if they cannot
deviate from questions
• Does not allow for inclusion
of interesting or revealing
stories

22. Semi-structured interviews: pros and cons
Pros Cons
• Allows for a degree of
comparability
• Still allows for inclusion of
some incidental comments
or stories
• May still be seen as
ultimately representing the
agenda of researchers from
outside the community

23. Unstructured interviews: pros and cons
Pros Cons
• Recognises unique body of
knowledge possessed by each
respondent
• Driven by community members
• Allows for the full expression of
each person’s ideas
• Easy to get off track
• May spend time discussing
seemingly irrelevant points
• More time-consuming than
other techniques
• May require transcription

24. Photography
• Enhances the:
- aesthetics
- content
• People, places and events
• Historic photos
• Photos from community members’ personal
collections

25. Photography: pros and cons
Pros Cons
• Adds aesthetic value to words of
community members
• Meaningful regardless of
language or literacy
• Depicts people, places and
events in a way that could not be
accomplished using words alone
• Could give the wrong impression
• Not all will be familiar with
photo-taking techniques
• Some community members may
feel uncomfortable in front of the
camera

26. Participatory video
•Depicts:
- events
- emotions
- community life
•Shares ideas regardless of language or literacy
•Involves youth in film making

27. Time and funding constraints
• Render certain techniques more appropriate than
others
• Balance between:
- lower cost but less comprehensive approaches
- higher cost but more thorough techniques
• Community role
• Training community members
- sharing learned skills

28. Ethical requirements of documentation
• Free, prior and informed consent
• Knowledge of risks and benefits
• Misuse of participatory practices
- extractive data mining versus empowerment
• Release forms
- signed consent
- generally not needed when participating in public events

29. “
”
The biggest communication problem is that
we do not listen to understand, we listen to
reply
Exercises in the next session
archana@pu.ac.in