By Dan Warner, Ph.D.
- Are you a Communimetrics data nerd?
- Do you worry about your CANS’ data integrity and database structure?
- Perhaps you find yourself drifting off into thoughts about data capture, storage, security, and analysis! (oy, the list goes on…).
- Or maybe you’re more on the statistical and display side: trying to identify norms and populations within your own data, and learn what other techniques are being used by other nerds, just like you, out there in some other social service agency?
Well if so, we have the support group for you! We are starting a Communimetric Data Roundtable. This quarterly phone meeting will provide a venue for those who work with CANS, ANSA, FAST, or any other such data, to learn about what others in the field are doing with this work, and give opportunities for all of us to share and get feedback. Our goal is to have each session be focused on one or two topics, with opportunities for discussion and questions.
My name is Dan Warner, Ph.D., and I am the executive director of Community Data Roundtable, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing a data-driven social services system. Our organization strongly endorses Communimetric methods because of their demonstrated power in measuring meaningful information at the individual and system level, while also quickly making that information actionable at those same two levels. I personally believe much of this power comes from the way the tools bind the commitments of those that use them. Be it the family and treatment providers as they discuss the CANS while planning treatment, or the managed care entity and advocacy groups as they review system planning initiatives – Communimetrics works because people come together to score and understand it.
The quarterly roundtable is meant to build such communication amongst those of us who work on the “back end” of TCOM projects. Upcoming planned topics include: review of different outcomes metrics for Communimetrics, an introduction to Communimetrics generally, and a few groups with larger projects want to share some of their preliminary findings. The spirit of the group is one of openness and sharing. This is not a place where people need to share finished work that is ready for publication, or to go live in some system. Instead, it is a place where people are invited to be creative, share open questions, and get feedback on hunches and ideas. We hope that such an environment will encourage creativity and robust growth for Communimetric science throughout the social services and scientific field.
Anyone interested in joining should email dwarner@communitydataroundtable.org with a request. Please let me know your professional background and relationship to communimetric data work in the email. Likewise, if you have an idea for a topic of discussion, or would like to present, please email me at the same address.
