If you have ever been tasked with influencing a behavior, you will know that it is critical to understand that behavior in context. You need to understand the issues faced by the people affected. At BIT, we refer to the process of understanding behavior in context as Exploring. Exploring is about discovering what people do and crucially why.
Over the course of the last 10 years, the authors have been asked for a guide on how to do Explore work by a number of our partners. In some cases, these partners have been policymakers who are familiar with qualitative research, but want to know more about how they can use their administrative data to understand their policies. In other cases, their partners have been foundations and not-for-profit organizations who are keen to learn more about their beneficiaries. Or sometimes their partners have been private sector organizations who are keen to see how they can increase their social impact by understanding the context in which they are operating. The authors have used the term ‘policymaker’ to describe anyone who fits into this category. Being a policymaker does not mean that you are in government.
While their definition of a policymaker is broad, they have written this guide with a specific audience in mind: someone who wants to develop better policies, services and products, and acknowledges that it is important to Explore the context in which you are operating before trying to change it. If you are still on the fence about this point, we hope that we can convince you otherwise.
Link zur Publikation