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PRODUCTS |
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Research is an essential component of any MVI activity (communication products, development projects or consultancies). MVI carries out research before, during and after its interventions to evaluate, adjust and substantiate its activities. MVI’s research strategy is to identify the capacities, anxieties, constraints and coping mechanisms of targeted populations. For that purpose, MVI relies on an interdisciplinary research strategy that results in the development of relevant “storytelling” across disciplines, ages, social classes, cultures and circumstance. Storytelling is the transformation of the information gathered in the multi-level research into the local communication style and idiom. MVI stories are meant to reach all ages, levels of development, culture and social class. Story-based MVI interventions use local “tales” and means of social, emotional and cognitive communication. The methodology implies the application of a health model that stresses the positive, i.e., conditions that may lead to happiness, well being solutions using positive example out of each respective culture and heroes, in sport, arts, cabaret, music, humor, that favor positive outcomes. The essential contribution of the multi-level evaluation is knowledge of cultural components and the local coping strategies and communication idiom of a specific group or community. The strategy results in empirical data as well as the development of relevant storytelling idiom for communication across disciplines, ages, social classes, cultures and circumstance. This multilevel evaluation allows MVI to select the most suitable and appropriate type of storytelling and media for local use. The methodology also provides insights for the validation of materials and tools with selected focal groups, development of proper evaluation techniques and indicators of success or failure and an evidence base for future interventions. The method is anchored in a systematic, naturalistic multi-method fieldwork approach called the “Cascade” (de Vries, Kaplan, Delespaul, 1992). This provides different levels of information ranging from public opinion, epidemiology to local community and cultural information to social networks and personal experience. Information is thus gathered from diverse sources as well as ad hoc focused mini-studies employing techniques such as focus groups, snowball sampling, brief psychological questionnaires and in-depth interviews and observations. This research strategy has produced valid evidence in a world sample of studies, from Africa and Asia to western urban environments. |
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