For the most-part, our site typically relies on the community stakeholders in our CAB for any type of formative research. The extent of our formative research with the CAB has been identifying possible stakeholders and, still, that is mostly done by the community education team at our CRS. The inexperience in formative research isn’t due to a lack of trying, however. Our current CAB members have been nurtured in an attempt to get them to understand the importance of community and stakeholder engagement and to build excitement and initiative around some of the examples that were provided in our module.
I think that stakeholder engagement and utilization of formative research methods will take shape and improve with the diversification and expansion of our current CAB. Until then, I think that it would serve us well to identify stakeholders outside of our current CAB and begin building the foundation for a relationship built on trust and mutual understanding. At that point, more in-depth formative research such as community forums and interviews can be used.
