The Inclusion Web offers an opportunity to explore many different ideas. We have listed just nine questions below and made some suggestions about how you might use the findings to develop your understanding of inclusion.
Are people more included than they were?
This is the core question that the Inclusion Web is designed to address. Whilst the numerical information does not tell us about the meaning of a connection for one person, we do know that more is better for people who are at risk of exclusion. The statistics from the Inclusion Web will show whether there is a significant increase from Time 1 to Time 2 in the group’s links with places and people, and in the spread of those links.
Is the increase sustained over the long term?
If Time 3 and Time 4 Inclusion Webs are completed and data collected you will be able to explore whether change is rapid at the beginning of contact with the service or organisation and then slows down, or vice versa.
Are brief interventions effective?
It may be worth examining whether projects that work with people over a brief period achieve different impacts compared with those which sustain their involvement over a longer period.
Has there been an increase in a particular domain?
To compare Time 1 and Time 2 for a single domain, enter the numbers for that one domain or save a copy of the completed Scoring Form spreadsheet and then delete the numbers in the other domains. The resulting figures will relate only to that domain. The clockspread will, of course, not have any meaning.
Are some life domains easier than others?
Another possible area of inquiry is to find out if most progress is made on those life domains that are the person’s highest priority for change. Compare changes in Inclusion Web data for groups of people who are all motivated to make changes in a particular domain to establish whether progress is easier in some domains than others.
Are the workers and supporters effective?
If the Inclusion Web shows that there has been significant change, this does not necessarily mean that the change was caused by your intervention. Indeed, some people may find engaging in community life much more difficult than others, and some sections of the community are reluctant to admit newcomers, so the skill of staff is only one consideration. Therefore considerable care should be taken before using the data to compare the performance of different workers, especially if they are active in different life domains or communities.
Does an increase in one life domain lead to an increase in another?
If you have access to data from people who have used the Inclusion Web more than twice, it will be possible to check this out. For example, it has been suggested that improvements in some life domains (especially learning and volunteering) will enhance employability for some people and these data will enable us to explore this connection. Once a person has a job, it is a commonly held assumption that this will result in subsequent changes in other life domains, such as sport or arts. If this is true then there should be a statistical association between achieving a job and subsequent changes in the other life domains. In contrast, work may be so busy for some people that it may have a detrimental effect on participation in other life domains.
Is it easier for some groups than others?
A comparison of groups of people who have different issues might be illuminating, for example, comparing results for people who have mobility problems against those from people with no mobility problems. One person who has made extensive use of the Inclusion Web suspected he was seeing two subgroups. The first group were very motivated to make changes (sometimes despite real challenges), while others needed much more time and encouragement before starting very slow changes in the way they think about themselves and their role and relationship networks.
Does the clock spread get richer over time?
The initial analysis combines the People and the Places scores to give a total clock spread figure: the number of life domains where there is a positive score in either the People or Places cells, or both. We might expect that, as the person increasingly engages in community life, a positive score in the Places cell of new life domains would be gradually matched with positive scores in the corresponding People cell. This more detailed analysis of clock spread could be tested.
You may, of course, have additional questions. Do share them with us!
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