Public Safety Insights Newsletter – December 30, 2013

How to Ensure Your Data Tell a Compelling Story
Public Safety Insight:	To maximize the effectiveness of your data, put them in a context that has meaning for your intended audience.

Do your data tell the story you intend to convey to your audience? Is the message received the same as the one you meant to communicate? Often the answer to these questions is “No” or “I don’t know.” Here’s how to maximize the effectiveness of your data: put them in a context that has meaning for the audience.

Public safety agencies collect data all the time. However, data are merely pieces of information that often are useless because there is no way of assessing them. Measures, on the other hand, consist of data that have been rendered meaningful because they are presented in a context that allows people to interpret and evaluate them.

Let’s say that you are trying to demonstrate how your agency contributes to creating a safe, healthy, economically viable community. Here are three examples of data that often are reported to stakeholders to convey that message:

1. The dollar amount of property lost in a fire.
2. The number of new officers graduating from a police training academy.
3. The number of minutes it takes for paramedics or EMTs to arrive at an incident.

It’s highly unlikely that the intended audience will be able to interpret this information, which means the “value” message you were trying to convey was ineffective. To ensure that stakeholders understand the meaning you are trying to communicate, you must convert the data to measures that (a) catch their attention and (b) make sense to them. For example, reporting information as percentages or ratios, or using multi-period comparisons provides a context within which data can be comprehended more easily. Couple that tactic with tying the data to outcomes that matter to the audience, and you now have a compelling message.

Compare the above data to these measures:

1. The dollar amount of property SAVED in a fire as a percentage of total property value.

   This information focuses attention on the magnitude of the positive value provided by the agency. Adding the results of a trend analysis or using multi-year comparisons would paint an even more compelling story about the cumulative value realized.

2. The (new) total number of officers compared to the number required for the agency to provide the desired level of public safety.

   People can assess the extent to which the number of new officers is sufficient to support the desired level of public safety.

3. The response time required to save lives/minimize injury for a range of emergencies (e.g., cardiac arrests, drowning) and the actual response time.

   People will be able to see more clearly the urgency of resources needed to ensure timely responses.

Whether your intention is to gain support for resource requests or to demonstrate the value your agency provides, which set of information tells a more compelling story? The bottom line: to communicate effectively, you must “connect the dots” clearly for your audience by putting your data into a context that they can grasp easily AND that matters to them.

For additional tips on how to communicate more effectively by avoiding common measurement mistakes, take a look at our article Solutions to the 5 Most Common Measurement Mistakes.

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To find other articles and resources that may be of value to you, I invite you to visit my web site at www.PublicSafetyInsights.net.

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©2013 Pat Lynch | Public Safety Insights