April 18-21, 2011 was very busy and productive for us here at the Global Impact Study. We held two workshops – one on survey data analysis and one on our project-wide data integration plan. During the survey data analysis workshop, we reviewed initial user survey data to identify three high-level reports that we will produce this spring: a user profile report, a report on services offered at public access ICT venues and how people are using them, and a report on perceived impacts of using public access ICT.

Survey data analysis workshop; photo courtesy of Melody Clark

In our workshop on data integration, we developed a data integration framework, demonstrating how we will tie together the data and findings from all of our research activities. The framework will provide an analytical lens for interpreting our data and conceptualizing the impacts of public access ICTs. We also identified the main objectives for a project-wide data integration workshop which we will hold at the end of June 2011. The June workshop will bring together our research partners to share findings from their in-depth studies and local country contexts, review data from all components of the project research, and identify streams of analysis and themes for our research reports.

We would like to thank Francois Bar, Mike Crandall, Hil Lyons and Yuan Chiam from the Center for Statistical Consulting, and George Sciadas, as well as Andy Gordon and Beth Kolko for their invaluable insights and participation during last week’s workshops. Thanks also to all our research partners for your updates and reports, which were valuable inputs for the workshops.