Designing reports for participatory analysis

Objective: Every two years, school districts across the country collect data on risky health behaviors among youth using the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). It's a meaty survey that allows communities to track trends related to substance use, mental health, and physical health. The Waltham Partnership for Youth (WPY) wanted to prepare a YRBS report that would be easy for youth, parents, and community members to engage with and digest.

Approach: We designed a report that organizes a large amount of information into accessible, single-page topic summaries. We stuck with easy-to-read charts, such as trend lines and bar charts, and placed these visual elements in the same location on each page. This way, readers would always know where to look for key information such as disaggregations by grade or demographics. We also color-coded the report by topic area for ease of navigation (substance use findings in purple, mental health findings in blue). We created the report in slideshow format on Google Slides, making it easy for WPY to embed on their website and for readers to scan on their phones.

Result: WPY has trained youth to facilitate community conversations on the data. With one-pagers on each topic easily available, they print the topics of interest to their audience and, during their presentations, break out into small group discussions around these topics. WPY shared the results with school administrators, PTOs, students, and community groups throughout the 2019-20 school year.