Talking Through the Community Survey
By Saaj Patel
Artist: Arzu (@pakgaystani on Instagram)
Learning about the survey process
When I came to SAYHU in the summer of 2020, as part of the Virtual Summer Institute, I had no clue what “digital humanities” really meant or consisted of. I was in the middle of my undergraduate studies as an Anthropology major and familiar with ethnography and oral history, but not as much with the digital tools that could be used for analysis and processing. It wasn’t until I joined and read through the #communitymapping channel on the Slack space that my interest was piqued in the field. There, I was able to see past conversations between community members dating back to early 2020 when the first drafts of the survey came around. I saw the designers were asking questions under the umbrellas of demographics, background information, personal experiences and involvement with SAYHU—all questions being optional. This initiative grew out of the Preservation Project and an “attempt by [them] to directly learn more about who our SAYHU community is.” I wanted to continue the goal of the creators, while updating it and getting a chance to finish what they started.
To get started with the formation of the survey, I met a couple of times with Dr. (Rachel Afi) Quinn to discuss what exactly we were looking for with the survey and how we might address it. After determining that we wanted a good idea of the people that make up the broader community, she put me in contact with Sharan [Kaur Mehta], a fellow community member and graduate student in sociology at Rice University. I knew of her work because I participated in the sociological study she conducted in early 2021 among different members of the South Asian community, focusing on the relationship between race, religion, politics, and identity for South Asians in the US, and whether collective action may be (re)shaping boundaries within and across the South Asian diaspora in the US. Working with her was awesome and I was so appreciative of the time she took to sit with me and discuss potential questions and their implications, the flow and outline, and what the results could lead to. The process also educated me on mindfulness in wording and how to address community needs, resulting in the inclusion of a section asking about any needs that community members might have, ranging from work opportunities, SAYHU programming they would like to see, or even the linguistic range.
Putting our draft to the test
Once finished and looked over, I sent the survey to a small group of people within the #communitysurvey channel who had expressed that they would be interested in doing a test run of it and giving feedback. I really appreciate all of the community members who took part in this because I knew they were being thorough and paying attention to detail. This part of the process was a huge help because not only did I get live reactions, but I also knew the community this was addressing could give input on the survey (I’m even glad that feedback was an option after the test run phase because it gave insight into what a next survey could look like). We moved on to promoting the survey and getting it out to our broader community through multiple Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and SAYHU Slack posts. Even from the trial of the survey, it was apparent that people get their SAYHU news from different sources. Covering all of our bases was a big piece in maximizing our reach, and therefore our glimpse into how we can adapt to our community.
What we learned
After some prior difficulty in getting responses, a successful book giveaway (We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba) and some weeks of promoting our survey, we decided to close the application with a total of 25 submissions. While this is a smaller amount of our community, the information gathered was abundant and still seemed reflective of who exactly SAYHU is. We learned that, based on the 25 people, we have two majorities in SAYHU: women and people who use she/her pronouns, respectively. We also learned that 63% of respondents grew up in Houston and 48% identify as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. I’m very grateful for the chance to craft this survey and see results because not only do we have a better understanding of how to shape programming for our members, but also how our current methodologies have made positive contributions.
SAYHU’s future
Looking forward from the results of the survey, I’m excited for what’s to come. Our collaboration with the organization, Advocates for Youth, has also been affected. With community input, we are able to better select AFY-led trainings with content that interests our members, as well as know exactly what kind of content members want to see on curriculum pages for Mental Health and Sexualities/Sexual Health & Education. We were also able to gage how we can engage with our community for planning future events like the annual Summer Institute. People were able to indicate if they know others who might be interested, if they’d like to participate as a guest, or indicate if they’d like to be interviewed for the Preservation Project. Our projects span many interests and to see so many hands on is inspiring.
Saaj Patel (he/his) is a SAYHU intern who, after participating in the 2020 Virtual Summer Institute, began working with SAYHU in January 2021. Saaj is a recent graduate of the University of Houston, where he studied anthropology, linguistics, and French. His interests are in linguistics, postcolonial studies, and language acquisition. As part of the SAYHU team, he is working on developing the Sexualities/Sexual Health curriculum page, the Community Survey, and the SAYHU social media.