Choosing a Community Engagement Format | Accessibility at Waterloo

This webpage is part of the broader Equitable Community Engagement Guide for Disability Inclusion. This Guide can also be accessed as a downloadable document: Equitable Community Engagement Guide for Disability Inclusion (MS Word).

Community engagement is built on the principle that people from equity-denied communities, including disabled persons, are affected by decisions made on our campuses and have a fundamental human right to participate in the decision-making process. This participation may include being informed, providing feedback, or leading the process. The type of community engagement you choose impacts the commitment you make to your stakeholders.

Consultation is only one example of community participation in decision-making. Consider your goal in engaging the public and disabled persons along the spectrum of community engagement that recognizes the increasing power of participants: inform, consult, involve, collaborate, empower (see IAP2 Resources (webpage) for full resource).

People from equity-denied groups have systemically less access to power and decision-making or leadership structures. They are often seen as research subjects or participants instead of leaders or knowledge experts. Our community engagement practices must challenge these oppressive, systemic norms.

Spectrum of Community Engagement

Purpose	Inform	Consult*	Involve	Collaborate	Empower
Goal	To provide the community with balanced and objective information to assist them in understanding the problem, alternatives, opportunity, or solution.	To obtain community feedback on analysis, alternatives, and/or decisions.	To work directly with the community throughout the process to ensure that community concerns and aspirations are consistently understood and considered.	To partner with the community in each aspect of the decision, including the development of alternatives and the identification of the preferred solution.	To place the final decision making in the hands of the community.
Sharing information	Organization shares information with community	Community shares information with organization	Organization and community share information	Organization and community share information	Organization and community share information
Final Decision	Organization	Organization	Organization	Organization	Community
Commitment to the Community	We will keep you informed.	We will keep you informed, listen to and acknowledge concerns and aspirations, and provide feedback on how community input influenced the decision.	We will work with you to ensure that your concerns and aspirations are directly reflected in the alternatives developed and provide feedback on how community input influenced decisions.	We will look to you for advice and innovation in forming solutions and incorporate your advice and recommendations into the decisions.	We will implement what you decide.
Example Formats	Fact sheets Websites Open houses	Surveys Focus groups Interviews	Workshops	Advisory committees	Planning committees

*Note: The term “consultation” is intertwined with a history of harm and exploitation in Indigenous communities. Consider using alternative terms such as “community engagement”, or by explicitly naming the format, for example “focus group”.

Examples of Community Engagement

Community Engagement Example	Descriptions	Pros	Cons	Reasons to Choose
Survey (Example: Consult)	A series of questions distributed to a subset of community members.	Efficient timeline Effective sampling may result in more accurate characteristics of large populations or diverse audiences Creates a private and anonymous setting to gain more candid answers Quantitative data may be easier to analyze	May result in less detailed feedback No opportunity for clarifying questions	I want to hear from many, diverse voices.
Interviews (Example: Consult)	In-depth interviews with a set number of participants that often consist of open-ended questions.	Gives participants space to speak without one participant dominating a group conversation More detailed feedback from each participant	Relies heavily on moderator knowledge and skill Requires knowledge of notetaking and qualitative data analysis	I am later in the project timeline and want to explore specific topics through deeper dialogue.
Focus groups (Example: Consult)	A selected gathering of people that participate in a moderated discussion of preset questions.	Participants can consider and respond to other perspectives Explore new ideas outside the scope of your structured questions Allows for flexibility to ask for clarification or more detail, as well as dive deeper into specific topics	Requires knowledge of notetaking and qualitative data analysis May capture skewed perspectives based on participant sampling and dominant conversations Relies heavily on moderator knowledge and skill	I am early in my project timeline and want to understand broad topics.
Workshops (Example: Involve)	A selected gathering of people that emphasizes collaborative and participatory activities and exercises.	Creative and action-oriented activities help create new ideas that the researchers may not have considered May avoid group discussion biases and inadvertent consensus by dividing participants into smaller groups Supports introverted and extroverted participants in full engagement	The potential formation of new ideas demands the potential for action or integration of these new ideas into your project	I am in early in my project timeline and want to generate new ideas.
Public meeting or Townhall (Example: Inform)	A gathering open and available to everyone in the community where moderators will guide group conversation.	Opportunity to hear more voices without researcher sampling bias (note that self-selection bias remains)	Limited opportunities to hear diverse voices	I want to inform stakeholders and collect general feedback about my project plan and progress.
Advisory and Planning Committees (Example: Collaborate or Empower)	A small group of representative stakeholders convened by a sponsor for an extended period of time to represent a range of stakeholder groups for the purpose of sharing opinions, studying issues, and developing recommendations.	Opportunity to meaningfully engage community members in the length of the project, ensuring stakeholder input at multiple stages	Potentially high turnover of committee members due to other stakeholder responsibilities Community awareness of an advisory or planning committee, as well as how to contribute, may be limited and require meaningful strategy	I want to empower stakeholders to have meaningful impact on the direction of and decisions made within the project.