Democratizing Access to Community-Based Survey Findings Through Dynamic Data Visualizations

Abstract

OurStats (https://www.cbrc.net/ourstats) is a data visualization dashboard developed by the Community-Based Research Centre (CBRC) to increase access to data from the Sex Now surveys—Canada’s largest community-based surveillance study of gay and bisexual men. An evaluation of the OurStats dashboard was conducted using an online survey distributed through the CBRC and Advance Alliance—an alliance of Canada’s leading HIV and queer men’s health organizations. Since being launched in November 2019 (through December 2019), 350 unique visitors used the OurStats Dashboard (5.8 per day). Based on responses from 10 community partners, all respondents said they would probably/definitely use OurStats again and would probably/definitely recommend it to colleagues; nine felt it was much/somewhat better than traditional academic outputs (e.g., poster presentations, journal articles); and seven felt it was much/somewhat better than traditional knowledge translation outputs (e.g., fliers, posters, and social media posts). Respondents said they would use OurStats to identify needs of gay and bisexual men (n = 9), prepare grant/funding applications (n = 9), prepare presentations about Sex Now data (n = 7), and evaluate the impact of local programs (n = 4). Overall, half felt that OurStats was somewhat/extremely easy to use and half felt that it was somewhat difficult to use. The most commonly identified requested improvement was to provide help documentation that explained how each of the display settings changed the visualizations. From these findings, we conclude that dynamic visualizations for community-based survey data are highly feasible and acceptable, provided appropriate support is available to help community partners use these tools.