Generating Insights
Getting from data to insights can be difficult for teams. However with this template, you can easily create actionable sentences.
Related Approaches
Learning Diaries
Positive Deviance
Participatory Rural Appraisal
Life Histories
Insights are short sentence that summarise learnings. They can be used in reports, slideshows, or can even turned into posters.
This activity can be used during a debrief, collaborative analysis, or sensemaking workshop, or any other data analysis step.
Remote teams can use a digital platform or messaging application to generate insights.
Step 1: Read your data
In the first step, take some time to really read your data and then re-read it. It is important that the insights are driven by the data you have generated.
Step 2: Break the sentence into sections
- Using the template highlighted below, identify each of the five pieces of information that will make up your sentence.
- [#] How many people does this data represent? Some, all, few, several?
- [case type]Who or what is represented? Women, men, entrepreneurs, government actors?
- [verb] What is one action word that summarizes what you saw or heard? This is often in the past tense. Felt, identified, discussed?
- [observation] What is the main takeaway? This is usually the longest part of the sentence.
- [why] Start with the word ‘because’ and try and identify why this is happening.
Step 3: Put your sentence together
Bring all the parts together and re-read it. Does anything need to be updated or revised?
Step 4: Test your sentence
Come back to your sentence the next day and check and see if it still makes sense. Then, share it with your team and see if they have any experiences or observations that would refine or clarify the sentence.
Step 5: Share your sentence(s)
The final step is to find a clear and useful way to share your sentences. This can be done through a slide presentation, a report, or even a comic strip. Think about who the audience is and what you want them to do with the insights.
Travel Restricted Times
While insight generation is best done in person, it can also be completed using participatory methods and online tools. However, for best results this should be done with internet access and computers.
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Computer and internet access |
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See an example of participatory activities using Google Slide.
Learn more on the digital tools page.
Examples
Several male staff members feel more confident when working with female colleagues because of what they learned in the training.
6/10 women water entrepreneurs identified that care work was the biggest barrier to expansion because they don’t have additional time to manage new kiosks.
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