Why disseminate? Sharing research results—first with the women and men who contributed to it, then more widely with men and women likely to be interested in the findings—ensures you do not keep the knowledge acquired to yourself. Without dissemination, the research project is never fully completed.
Dissemination can come in many forms and be intended for various audiences.
How to disseminate? How should results be disseminated? Which formats to use? With whom should you discuss the sharing of research findings? With the research team? With the communities? Participants? How to discuss it?
What formats can you use for your report? You do not have to limit yourself to a written report. A written report—that is never disseminated—containing all the information gathered during the research process will have no impact on women’s lives or on the policies affecting them. But a report can be useful, for instance, to the Band Council, or it could be the basis of a brief submitted to a parliamentary committee. However, it might be useless to people in the community who won’t read a document several pages long.
Other possibilities could be filmed testimonies or a poster, beadwork or policy-change recommendations, or all the above. It will depend on the target audience and the objective of the sharing.
Disseminate to whom? There can be multiple dissemination objectives and target audiences.
In the context of this project, the first and foremost audience should be the women themselves, that is, the women who participate in the research and, more broadly speaking, the women who live in the communities. For example, if the research project is on identity, the goal will be to reassert a definition of identity that lies outside the framework of the Canadian government and instead comes from the women’s perspective in the communities. Women are the primary target audience; they are the priority when sharing results. Thus, dissemination can take the form of a meeting, an exchange. These women can also decide who else to reach out to and the way to do it.
If the objective is to change policy, also target those with the power to achieve or stimulate change: band council, legislators, municipal counsellors, federal or provincial governments, etc. For these audiences, a report, brief and press conference are the best means of dissemination.
To create awareness among a non-Indigenous group on the reality of Indigenous peoples, the target audience is much broader. You could consider an easily accessible publication, a poster, a television or radio program.
What should be disseminated? Decide what to disseminate (do you want to disseminate everything?) and in particular to whom. You may want to disseminate certain segments only to women’s groups, while others to the community’s authorities, the government or the general public—in which case the format and content will not be the same. Deciding what to disseminate does not necessarily mean hiding results, but rather adapting the format and volume of what is to be shared with the given target audiences.
Factors to consider: Consider the decision-making process with regards to dissemination: Why disseminate? To whom? How?
