{"id":1943,"date":"2014-10-31T10:07:33","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T17:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nnlm.gov\/evaluation\/blog\/?p=1943"},"modified":"2019-09-24T10:13:30","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T17:13:30","slug":"the-oers-appreciative-inquiry-project-seeking-strength-based-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/2014\/10\/31\/the-oers-appreciative-inquiry-project-seeking-strength-based-change\/","title":{"rendered":"The OERC\u2019s Appreciative Inquiry Project: Seeking Strength-Based Change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/neo\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/10\/AI-commons.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1945 size-medium\" src=\"\/neo\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/10\/AI-commons-300x112.jpg\" alt=\"AI commons logo\" width=\"300\" height=\"112\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For the past couple of months, the OERC has engaged in an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) interview project to get feedback and advice from users on to our services. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centerforappreciativeinquiry.net\/more-on-ai\/\">Appreciative Inquiry<\/a> \u00a0was developed in the 1980s by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva as an approach to bring \u201ccollaborative and strength-based change\u201d to organizations. The methods are designed to collect information emphasizing positive aspects of an organization and vision for a better future. Probably the best known AI tool is the interview, which covers three basic areas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A peak experience of the interviewee.<\/li>\n<li>Why the interviewee found that experience so valuable.<\/li>\n<li>What the interviewee wished could happen to bring about more exceptional experiences.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(You can find the OERC\u2019s adaption of these basic questions\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/\/nnlm.gov\/evaluation\/guide\/Interview_guide_participants.docx\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>When people are first introduced to AI evaluation processes, they skeptically ask if this approach doesn\u2019t lead to positively biased data.\u00a0 I would say no, because we are asking for descriptive rather than evaluative comments. I call the interviews \u201cconstructive conversations without criticism.\u201d You come away from the experience thinking \u201cwhat could be?\u201d rather than \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d The feedback was painless to me, because our users made recommendations in wishful, rather than judgmental, terms.<\/p>\n<p>I also think AI is a superior way to get frank advice from users if they generally like your organization. When asked for feedback, particularly in interpersonal situations, interviewees may not want to offend the organization\u2019s staff or, worse, cause negative repercussions. When you ask people to talk about dreams and wishes, their imaginations are engaged and fear of being critical falls away. They are free to give you great ideas for moving forward.<\/p>\n<p>If your organization is about to embark on strategic planning of any kind, I highly recommend the AI approach. You can get more information about AI methods at the <a href=\"http:\/\/appreciativeinquiry.case.edu\/\">Appreciative Inquiry Commons<\/a>\u00a0or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centerforappreciativeinquiry.net\/\">Center for Appreciative Inquiry<\/a>\u00a0websites. For an excellent book on applying AI to evaluation practice, check out <em>Reframing Evaluation through Appreciative Inquiry<\/em> by Preskill and Catsambas (Sage, 2006).<\/p>\n<p><em>Note: The OERC \u00a0will post results of its AI project in a future blog post, when\u00a0we have completed our analysis.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; For the past couple of months, the OERC has engaged in an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) interview project to get feedback and advice from users on to our services. Appreciative Inquiry \u00a0was developed in the 1980s by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva as an approach to bring \u201ccollaborative and strength-based change\u201d to organizations. The methods&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/2014\/10\/31\/the-oers-appreciative-inquiry-project-seeking-strength-based-change\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2959,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8ICUo-vl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2959"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6590,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions\/6590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}