Consulting

Our experts helps organizations learn more about themselves through research, build new programs through development, and sometimes, both.

See how below.

Research: Evaluation, Exploration, Narrative

We offer three types of research, carried out by teams composed of Penn GSE faculty, staff and graduate scholars: evaluation, exploration, and narrative.

Read more about each below:

Evaluation

We evaluate the processes and products of your organization so that you can be your most effective. Our evaluation services are wide-ranging, but include, for example, the audit of existing data sets, review of internal evaluation criteria and processes, and assessment of how well you are meeting external (funder, government, etc.) expectations. Evaluation work is mostly quantitative in nature, but can also include a qualitative component.

Exploration

When a specific question or problem arises which evaluation may not address, or evaluation work uncovers new issues, exploratory research may be called for. This kind of research involves more intensive collaboration together throughout the research cycle. Exploratory research also calls for more resources of time and personnel to adhere to the four steps mentioned above in the evaluation section. Because this kind of research relies more on the logical practices of abduction (casual guesswork) and induction (piecing together logical consequences) than evaluation, it tends to be more resource-intensive. The use of qualitative methods such as direct observation and inferential quantitative methods such as regression analysis, as well as creative blending of both, can be expected.

Narrative

We provide narrative research services to enrich existing evaluative and or exploratory research, or as a standalone offering. It involves gathering mostly qualitative data about an organization's processes and products, with the goal of telling their story, so to speak, to the world. The strength of narrative research is that it can provide our partners with not just useful findings but, in the process of collaboratively building the research plan, symbolic tools for conceptualizing their stories and ultimately, sharing them.

All our research offerings involve following three basic steps:

  1. creating clear research objectives and a dynamic research plan,

  2. carrying out the research, and

  3. producing a report based on analyses and findings.

Development: Design and Build Programs, Create Stories

By “development”, we mean creation, and our team’s focus is on designing and building new programs or services, and creating new stories.

Find out more below:

Design and Build Programs

Drawing upon the resources and networks available to our team at Penn, as well as the decades of experience our team brings to the process, we design programs for supporting human flourishing, with a focus on youth, and then, build them. Research is often, but not always, part of this process. For example, in the case of developmental evaluation, which would fit under “exploration” above, there is an overlap, perhaps even a virtuous-cyclical and iterative relationship, between theory and practice.

Create Stories

By helping you create stories about your organization that help you communicate key meanings to the public, we advance possibility development. Narrative research for example can provide data about the major story or stories of your organization, which may lead to the production of communications about the organization, or, the collaborative publication of academic papers and for fuller projects, books.