PiTS Toolkit: Dissemination Phase

Objectives

During this phase, syringe services programs who have recently implemented a Point in Time Survey (PiTS) will: 

• Learn how to create a data visualization
• Explore stakeholders that might benefit from learning about their survey findings
• Consider ways to implement survey findings for program improvement

Contents

To help you utilize your Point in Time Survey findings, this page contains materials to walk you through point in time survey data visualization and dissemination. It also includes resources for you to conduct a preliminary stakeholder analysis.

Step 1: Plan Data Visualizations

Once you have begun analyzing your data, you will want to think about how you communicate it to your stakeholders. We have created a handout that can help you begin to think about your goals when communicating your survey findings, that you can download below.

One of the components of the Data Communication Goals handout is to think about what type of visualization you’d like to use to share the finding of interest. To support you as you think through that, we have created a handout with information and resources related to data visualization as well as a checklist you can use to determine if the visualization you have created is effective and likely to be understood.

Stakeholder Messaging

Programs can use the following handout to explore who might benefit from learning about their survey findings. This handout includes:

1. A stakeholder mapping activity, to help SSPs categorize key stakeholders and determine realistic goals for influencing them,
2. A stakeholder analysis activity, based on Adaptive Leadership principles, to help SSPs consider how to best appeal to their stakeholders, and
3. A stakeholder messaging activity, to help SSPs strategize about how to use their survey data to influence stakeholders.

Step 2: Create Data Visualizations

Tables

Using skills from the Pivot Tables tutorials during the data monitoring component of the implementation phase, you are now ready to create tables of descriptive statistics to visualize frequencies and stratifications. The below document has table shells for the sample Point in Time Survey we created, but you can easily adapt it to match your own survey – simply copy your variables of interest to the left-hand column, and then calculate the frequencies and proportions in the right-hand column.

Charts

In this tutorial we will learn how to create visualizations using pivot charts. There are many other software and online data tools you can use to create data visualizations, but this demonstrates the way you can use the same software your data is already in to create them.

Step 3: Use Data to Improve Your Program

This handout includes guided activities to help SSPs reflect on what they learned through their survey data, including what they learned about their participants, programs and services, and/or partners and the community. It will also support SSPs to strategize around opportunities to improve their program and services based on their findings, identifying what they’d like to achieve, what barriers and needs they must address, and what short-term actions they can take to move these program improvements forward.