Get the Real Story

Assess the Risks
Dale Spender has noted that women are more likely than men to assess risks before taking action and suggests that, although risk aversion may make women less adventurous about technology, it is "a positive advantage in our technological society... This risk assessment factor is the quality factor, it is precisely what we have left out of our decision making processes in the technological context." She suggests that the picture of western technology might be very different if decision makers had asked these basic questions:

• What is it for?
• Do we need it?
• Can we afford it?
• Who will clean up the mess afterwards?⁴

Search Behind the Statements
Assess language, statements, claims, evidence and data against information available from other sources. Analyze how information is gathered and how statistical information is changed and interpreted in the transfer from Statistics Canada reports to a newspaper article, for example.

Examine the statements of policy makers, decision makers and politicians for the basis on which statements are made. For example, find out what it means to say that "there are now 50% more women users of the Internet than there were 2 years ago." How many are there now? How many were there two years ago? What proportion of the whole Internet user population does that represent? How are "users" defined: are they those who have Internet accounts whether or not they use them regularly, are they people who are on line every day, every week, every month? Where are the users: in urban or rural areas, in schools and colleges or in the community?

Also, determine how the statement tallies with other available information, for example reports from Internet providers on the gender breakdown of their subscribers and their usage patterns. Unchallenged statements can continue to be repeated until they have the force of truth on which decisions are made.

Community Evaluation
In formal education, evaluation and research are very important strategies to guide decisions about whether or not to continue with a program, expand it or apply it in other situations, and under what conditions. Although it is sometimes portrayed as the domain of experts, evaluation is basically well organized observations about experience.

Community based research strategies enable people with direct experience to record their observations and compile a picture that can be used to support decision making. Learners, instructors and program coordinators obviously have valuable experiences to contribute to a picture about particular programs and technologies. But so do others in the community, including those who could not participate, and their story will more likely be included in a "community snapshot developed by community members rather than in official institutional statistics and reports.