Analyzing Focus Groups Through Poetic Dialogues: Enhancing Participant Engagement and Representation in Program Evaluation

Abstract

Evaluating programs in rural communities can present challenges when large, observable successes, such as infrastructure additions, are limited due to resource challenges. These successes are often quantifiable and easily identified by external stakeholders. However, there are often intangible and social impacts that should be captured as successes of rural community-focused programs that may not fit the more quantitative methodology. Arts-based methodologies, like poetic analysis, can help capture the diverse impacts of a program, while also centering the voices of program participants in the evaluation itself. This study examined the use of poetic dialogues, an application of poetic transcriptions for focus group data, to highlight the socio-cultural, and sometimes intangible, program impacts from a rural food access and health promotion program. We collected data through focus groups with community coalitions implementing the program in four rural Georgia counties. We then crafted poetic dialogues to capture program impact, both for program evaluation as well as community engagement efforts. Merging a user-focused and appreciative evaluation approach with arts-based analysis allowed us to capture and communicate impacts that were intended to be more responsive to the individual and collective identities of rural community members impacted by the health promotion program. Implications for using poetic dialogues are discussed, as well as potential avenues for future research to expand this research area.

Headnote

Evaluating programs in rural communities can present challenges when large, observable successes, such as infrastructure additions, are limited due to resource challenges. These successes are often quantifiable and easily identified by external stakeholders. However, there are often intangible and social impacts that should be captured as successes of rural community-focused programs that may not fit the more quantitative methodology. Arts-based methodologies, like poetic analysis, can help capture the diverse impacts of a program, while also centering the voices of program participants in the evaluation itself. This study examined the use of poetic dialogues, an application of poetic transcriptions for focus group data, to highlight the socio-cultural, and sometimes intangible, program impacts from a rural food access and health promotion program. We collected data through focus groups with community coalitions implementing the program in four rural Georgia counties. We then crafted poetic dialogues to capture program impact, both for program evaluation as well as community engagement efforts. Merging a user-focused and appreciative evaluation approach with arts-based analysis allowed us to capture and communicate impacts that were intended to be more responsive to the individual and collective identities of rural community members impacted by the health promotion program. Implications for using poetic dialogues are discussed, as well as potential avenues for future research to expand this research area.

Keywords: poetic transcription, arts-based methodology, qualitative research, culturally responsive evaluation, identity

Introduction

I prefer to make the claim that the poet is a human scientist. Where many human science researchers focus on research questions and methods, conclusions and implications, as a poet I am often more intrigued with how language works to open up possibilities for constructing understanding. (Leggo, 2004, p. 30)

Disseminating evaluation results in usable and relatable ways is a cornerstone of program evaluation (Johnson et al., 2013; Patton, 2008). Presenting evaluation results to stakeholders is critical as it offers opportunities to explain and justify the findings and interpretations resulting from time spent engaging in the evaluative process (Johnson et al, 2013). Key to the dissemination of evaluation results is crafting an engaging presentation of results to demonstrate to stakeholders the relevance and importance of impact measurements (Johnson et al., 2013). One approach for creating engaging evaluation results dissemination is to incorporate arts-based methods of data analysis (Sanders & Lamm, 2022; Simons & McCormack, 2007).

The use of creative arts, or arts-based methodologies, in designing, conducting, analyzing, and disseminating the results of program evaluations can evoke "different ways of knowing and understanding the values of a program" (Simons & McCormack, 2007, p. 292). Poetry specifically offers an opportunity to communicate multiple realities within human experience, allowing forms of knowledge to emerge in the evaluation process that are often excluded due to being positioned within a positivist, objectivist paradigm (Furman et al., 2007; Sanders & Lamm, 2022). While evaluation results are often presented dryly and without much that catches an intended user's attention, poetry can make data more vivid for intended audiences through capturing the feelings of those interviewed and providing opportunities to connect with the lived experiences of others through stories (Hill, 2005). Stories allow for the expression of complex social and cultural contexts of those negotiating the experience or phenomenon of interest (Hill, 2005) and thus may provide a unique perspective on evaluating programmatic impacts (Sanders & Lamm, 2022). Arts-based representations of evaluation data can offer opportunities to deeply contemplate the experiences of both evaluators and stakeholders in a project, catalyzing critical reflection of and engagement with programmatic impacts for multiple audiences who have diverse experiences with the program (Johnson et al., 2013).

Richardson (1997) incorporated poetic forms of data within program evaluation to re-present lived experiences and emphasize positionality within data (re)construction. Context, which includes the evaluator-as-instrument, becomes a framework for placing people and actions within a time-bound, physical, geographic, historical, and cultural setting, which then provides increased opportunities for understanding what they are saying and doing (Hill, 2005; Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997). Hill (2005), when talking about her use of poetic portraits as a research strategy, highlights how "poems exemplify my voice in dialogue with the participants" and capture my voice discerning the sound and meaning of their voices ... while also honoring their voices ..." (p. 96). Through this reconstruction and contextualization, poetic forms of analysis can help evaluators capture and evoke "the full dimensionality of human experience" (Johnson et al., 2013, p. 487), leveraging the power of qualitative storytelling to communicate impact of a program. Additionally, artful methods can also help identify and represent the values that underly participants" perceptions and experiences (Hill, 2005), leading to more holistic forms of analysis when used in complementarity with traditional evaluation methods.

In accordance with other scholars who use arts-based methods of evaluation (Simons & McCormack, 2007), we are not advocating for the replacement of other evaluation approaches 1n favor of those integrating creative arts. Rather, to achieve comprehensive and holistic assessments of impact, evaluators should integrate a range of different analytical approaches and alternative modes of representation to enhance the analytical breadth and depth, inclusivity, and accessibility of their work (Johnson et al., 2013; Simons & McCormack, 2007). Therefore, in this paper, we outline a process and findings for using one arts-based method, poetic transcription with focus groups (termed here as poetic dialogues), for use in community-based settings, primarily through program evaluation.

Communicating Evaluation Impact

The current study builds upon and expands poetic methodology explored in Sanders and Lamm (2022), using poetry as an analytic tool to enhance evaluation and social impact assessment for data collection, interpretation, and dissemination. Poetic methodologies can be defined as alternative forms of narrative inquiry that can illuminate embodied interactions within a specific context (Freeman, 2016). They consist of a range of creative analytic, reporting, and dissemination strategies that invite multiple voices and interpretations, involving the reader (and/or stakeholders) in active participation in evaluation meaning-making (Abma, 1997), either through the reconstruction of participant words in poetic form or poetry generated by the researcher to describe their interpretation of the research phenomenon (Butler-Kisber, 2018). Traditional, objectivist forms of evaluation prioritized authoritative texts, masking the author's role in data interpretation through various linguistic strategies such as third-person language and passive voice (Abma, 1997). Alternative approaches to evaluation, however, can "unmask the author" (Johnson et al., 2013, p. 488), showing their role in data (re)construction and making the staging of data done by researchers/evaluators more evident (Glesne, 1997).

Poetic methodologies can allow researchers to communicate findings in multidimensional and more accessible ways (Hill, 2005). Poetry can help deconstruct initial analyses of data. For example, a basic qualitative research design can reconstruct new analyses and insights from integrating artistic ways of knowing, specifically through emphasizing deepened dialogue with and about data from a researcher perspective (Ohito & Nyachae, 2019). Poetic representations of data analysis are a narrative methodology that foregrounds participant voices through building narratives related to research or evaluation questions, infusing empathy and resonance into the research process (Ward, 2011).

While poetic forms of reflection have been used in previous community development programming (Fortune et al., 2012), studies integrating health promotion program evaluation and artful methods of analysis were not present in the literature. Additionally, other scholars advocate for an increased use of arts-based methodologies in public health spaces due to disconnects between the quantitative data informing public health policy and the social and cultural contexts of those impacted by these policies (Byrne et al., 2018). Poetic methodologies have been underutilized in health promotion research, despite offering opportunities for engaging and reaching diverse audiences (Nichols et al., 2014). Evaluation is one method health promotion professionals can use to communicate their impact to broader audiences. Communicating this impact, however, can be difficult for health promotion and other community development professionals, specifically related to creating stories from their programming (Franz et al., 2014). Due to the narrative structure, poetic methodologies can be used by health promotion professionals to communicate impact through stories. These poetic stories allow for a representation of data to evoke emotional as well as cognitive responses to findings (Ward, 2011). For example, poetry also offers opportunities for critical reflections of health promotion contexts, challenging discourses inherent in the discipline and creating potential opportunities for "advancing health equity knowledge and action" (Petteway, 2022, para. 1). Johnson et al. (2013) argued that "alternative representational forms" of delivering evaluation results can "encourage thoughtful and critical discussion among evaluation stakeholders and facilitate their learning about the logic, meaningfulness, and promise of their program" (para. 1). Arts-based research and evaluation offers an opportunity to shift what we consider evidence, 1n health and evaluation research, highlighting complexities and multidimensionalities within the research context (Boydell et al., 2012). Despite its potential, few public health or health promotion evaluation efforts incorporate arts-based methodologies in their approach. Arts-based approaches, like poetic analysis, allow evaluators to access different ways of knowing the values underlying a program, that are likely missed in quantitative or basic qualitative program evaluation methodologies (Simons & McCormack, 2007).

Previously, poetic methods, like poetic transcription, have been used with interviews (Glesne, 1997; Hill, 2005; Sanders & Lamm, 2022). The current study explores the application of poetic transcription through a different data collection method: focus groups. Specific implications for evaluations using focus group methods exist. Focus group research is grounded within the social constructivist epistemological orientation, analyzing participant meaning-making as a product that only comes about through interaction, interpretation, and collective sense-making (Johnson et al., 2013; Wilkinson, 1998). Additionally, the methodology pulls from a critical perspective in that alternative forms of disseminating evaluation results can help legitimize diverse experiences and highlight marginalized standpoints within the evaluative setting (Hall, 2020; Johnson et al., 2013). While focus groups are a widely used method in qualitative evaluation research, few frameworks exist for analyzing focus groups from a social scientific perspective (Onwuegbuzie et al., 2009). Even fewer examples exist for poetic analyses of focus groups, with Kooken et al. (2007) providing one of the few examples. When looking from an evaluation perspective, the examples are relatively non-existent, save for Sanders and Lamm (2022). The current study aimed to explore the use of poetic transcriptions to enhance communication of social impact within community-based program evaluation for a rural food access and health promotion program. Poetic transcription has usually been conducted with individual interviews (Glesne, 1997; Hill, 2005); however, this study explores the methodological potential of poetic transcriptions with focus group data, in what the authors call "poetic dialogue."

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework guiding the analytical exploration of the study was the Identity-in-Context Framework (ICF; Sanders, 2023). The ICF is a framework developed to highlight the various ways in which identity conclusions - those positive or negative negotiations of self (White, 2004) - interact with and are acted upon by internal and external factors within a community development setting. Figure 1 presents the components of the ICF.

The components of the ICF include individual, community history, collective identity, community structure (place), structure, agency, power, and discourse (Figure 1). Identity lies at the heart of the ICF framework, both from a self-constructed perspective (at the individual level) to the externally imposed (those identities, often based in stereotypes or mischaracterizations, that external practitioners/evaluators bring to communities (Sanders, 2023). Negotiating identity occurs through social relationships and interactions with the cultural environment, as one's self-concept anchors positive or negative associations with their perceived identity conclusion (White, 2004). The dialectical relationship between the self-constructed and externally imposed identities yield those "attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, preferences, and aptitude that one chooses to express" in specific situations (Anderson et al., 2018, р. 33). The identities one chooses to or can express in various situations are influenced by one's education, lived experiences, gender, religion, cultural setting, nationality, socioeconomic status, and power structures of the environment in which an individual exists. As outlined in Sanders (2023), identity within the ICF is a fluid construct that can shift and change based on the environment surrounding an individual, making the ICF a context-dependent framework.

After considering individual identities in the framework, evaluation practitioners should also assess community history, or the shared historical memory of a group within a geographic space. Histories within a community can be personal, such as one's personal attachment to place as well as family connections (Nowell et al., 2006) or collective, built through the history of different individuals and groups in the community and their related experience). One's relationship to community history can impact the degree to which a participant may engage with resources and activities offered, enhancing or limiting the success of a community-based program. A related concept, collective identity, refers to large-scale, collective processes situated within a community context that are continually reproduced through discourse around sociocultural identity construction (Colombo & Senatore, 2005). Collective identity within ICF emerges from the dialectical relationship between an individual and the community history in which they are situated. Collective identity coincides largely with cultural identity, and the relationship between one's sociocultural group and the community history and environment in which they are situated influences their identity conclusions resulting from the process. If one's individual and collective identity is at odds with the dominant cultural underpinnings of a community-based program, the effectiveness and relevance of the program on the priority audiences is limited. Looking at another related concept, community structure (place), furthers one's potential connections to the physical and emotional connotations of a geographic community. Place as a spatial and affective component of identity facilitates one's feelings of attachment to the community at large (Anton & Lawrence, 2014), making it an influential component of the ICF.

Structures, the third influential sphere, can be imposed on communities from external and internal power sources, making identities more vulnerable to oppressive power structures, and thus likely less able to enact their agency, than others depending on their connection to the dominant cultural group (Dutta, 2008; Reid et al., 2020). Structures are closely related to agency. According to Bhattacharyya (2004), agency involves participants defining problems on their own terms and then "taking active measures to solve" those issues (p. 13), however, external structures can impact different collective and cultural groups' abilities to undergo their own problem-solving identification process. Non-dominant cultural groups may be less able to define and plan how they would like to address social issues within their community, as paternalistic power structures of the dominant cultural group are more likely to act on "objective" knowledge of what should be done in the communities and acting thusly (Bhattacharyya, 1995; Dutta, 2008).

Finally, language plays an important role in the social construction of reality, as social practices are constructed discourse and symbolic meaning-making (Yin, 2018). Power can also produce various identity categories within society (Weir, 2009). Because power and discourse are co-constitutive (Hall, 1996), discourses can legitimize various structures that uphold the decisionmaking power of the dominant cultural group to continue cycles of marginalization and oppression that influence identities developed through relationships between individuals, histories, and structures (Dutta, 2008).

Purpose and Research Questions

The purpose of this study was to apply the poetic transcription approach to focus group data (poetic dialogues) to explore the methodological potential of arts-based, poetic results dissemination for a rural health promotion project. The study was guided by one research question: What can poetic transcriptions illuminate about the lived identities of participants within the rural health promotion project?

Reflexivity and Positionality

As a researcher who studies identity, it is important for me (C.S.) to investigate reflexively the origins of my research interests. During my time as a graduate student at the University of Georgia, my primary research area of interest emerged to focus on using holistic conceptualizations of identity to navigate issues in science communication as well as how identity can be used as an orienting concept for community-based programming. Growing up, I never felt connected to a coalesced concept of identity. As an adopted person, I felt disconnected from a specific cultural heritage for most of my life. As I grew older, I started to recognize the ways in which identity and social connections influence people's behaviors, and I continue to remain fascinated by the ways culture and heritage influence who we are, even when we are not aware of the specific identity conclusions that influence how we move through the world. While we are tethered to our various identities, we express and repress them in response to our context, which can frequently change. It is in the changing and tethering, and the tension between the two, where I find identity most interesting.

Beyond the identity-focus of the current study, my interest in poetic transcription as an evaluation method occurred while I was participating in the five-year project on which the current study was based (described more fully in the "Data Collection" section). The major motivation for exploring the poetic methodology was seeing that the ways in which we were presenting the results of our project (primarily statistical and positivist) were not resonating with the community members. There seemed to be a disconnect between the work they were doing, their collective self-conceptualization, and the impacts we were reporting. The "facts and figures" approach to evaluation results sharing did not align with the reality and social identities of the communities with whom we were working. For example, with the infrastructure of these smaller, rural towns, what we saw as major shifts in perceptions of health were not necessarily recognized by the funding agency, who wanted to report on quantitative outputs. The poetic methodology helped me, as an evaluator, co-construct narratives of community members, showcasing the impact of the project on themselves and their communities, highlighting the social and intangible impacts emergent from the community-based project. Thus, I was searching for an evaluation methodology that could be more responsive to the sociocultural realities I was seeing within the communities.

Methodology

The specific form of poetic analysis used in the current study was derived from poetic transcription, which was developed by Glesne (1997) as the "creation of poemlike compositions from the words of interviewees" (p. 202) created with data from a study such as interview transcripts. While poetic transcription has traditionally been used with interview data (Glesne, 1997; Sanders & Lamm, 2022), the current study attempted to expand the methodology to focus group data. The new method, designated as "poetic dialogues," aimed to expand the affective method used to communicate social impacts of a project from individuals' perspectives (using individual interviews; Sanders & Lamm, 2022), to a conversational dialogue in which the social construction of perceived evaluation impacts can be observed.

Butler-Kisber (2002) suggested, alongside other scholars, that traditional descriptive qualitative methods are increasingly inadequate for reflecting the complexity of human behavior. Poetry as a method is not only a representational form of data dissemination; it is also a different way of interpreting and understanding the data in its context (Leavy, 2015). A researcher conducting poetic analysis should be aware of and sensitive to how the "expressive and creative dimension of the analysis ... invit[es] the reader to be personally touched by the text" (Ohlen, 2003, р. 558). Richardson (1997) posited that "[p]oetry is... a practical and powerful method for analyzing social worlds" (p. 522). The following sections situate the methodology used here in the context of epistemology and outline the researcher's role in generating poetic transcriptions within the new dialogical form.

Epistemological Perspective

Ohito and Nyachae (2019) found the largest gap in literature related to poetic inquiry was a lack of attention to the epistemological orientations in which poetic analysis occurred. The current study uses a postmodern philosophical orientation that "rethinks" (Caton, 2013, p. 127) the tension between constructivism, specifically social constructivism, and critical theory. Both theoretical perspectives are anchored in the interpretivist epistemology, which focus analytical efforts toward the embeddedness of human relationships within the social scientific endeavor (Caton, 2013). Analyzing evaluation results in alternative forms can be traced back to the constructivist underpinnings of social science research, specifically the interpretivist turn (Johnson et al., 2013). Lather (2006) outlines the primary motivation of the interpretivist turn as to understand social reality. Constructivism disavows the ontology of having an external, unbiased, and independent reality from which an individual can collect knowledge (Constantino, 2008). From a constructivist approach, the researcher's identity cannot be removed from the research process, and thus findings of research are "created through the [researcher's] interaction with the studied phenomenon" (Caton, 2013, p. 130). Social constructivism, more specifically, examines the constructivist philosophy from a social perspective by defining bodies of knowledge as social constructs emergent from human history and social interaction (Constantino, 2008). Traditional constructivist approaches view knowledge as generated through an individual's mind, whereas social constructivism considers knowledge and meaning making as a product of human relationships (Gergen & Gergen, 2008).

Critical epistemologies for qualitative research emerged from critical social theories about how social and political systems shape the lived experiences or realities of participants and thus influence how participants construct their reality, maintaining specific focus on power, privilege, and oppression (Merriam, 2002). Critical theory is oriented towards social justice and is rooted in a human rights agenda (Denzin, 2017). Lather (2006) described the primary motivation of critical theory as emancipatory. While traditional interpretivists center subjectivity in research, critical theorists use a modified subjectivity that explicitly acknowledges how the researcher, the researched, and society are influenced by their own lived experiences, and these lived experiences are manipulated by power structures imposing characterizations of culture, politics, race, gender, and class (Howell, 2013). From a critical theory perspective, poetic inquiry can help position the researcher/evaluator as a participant in the research process, rather than as an external, authorial voice (Langer & Furman, 2004), actively involved in the co-construction of meaning around the research topic (Davis, 2021). Poetic inquiry can also serve to highlight participants' voices in context, decentering the researcher/evaluators" perspectives of the program and recentering the intangible impacts important to those most impacted by a program.

To enhance the cultural responsiveness of programs in rural communities, a critical lens is important to highlight voices and cultural nuance and therefore limit the perpetuation of rural stereotypes. Cultural hegemony often emanates from urban centers, categorizing rural areas through simple descriptors such as closer to nature, simpler in life, and providing an escape for urban dwellers rather than as complex communities with disparate cultural heritage interacting with complex socioeconomic forces (Thomas et al., 2011). Often these stereotypes, or simple descriptions, limit the flexibility of program development in rural areas 1f urban cultural hegemony goes unchecked. Thus, methodologies rooted in critical theory that highlight divergent voices may more effectively capture both the tangible and intangible social impacts of programs 1n rural areas.

Data Collection Methods

Data collection occurred as part of the formative evaluation process for a five-year evaluation plan of a community-based health promotion project. The project, called Healthier Together (HT), aimed to reduce instances of diet-related chronic disease through increased access to nutrient-dense foods and safe spaces for physical activity in five rural counties identified as most at-risk for obesity in Georgia by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The HT project was a cooperative agreement funded through the CDC in partnership with the University of Georgia Colleges of Public Health, Family and Consumer Science, and Agriculture and Environmental Science, with University of Georgia Cooperative Extension as the primary onthe-ground liaison between university staff and communities. As part of the formative evaluation process, focus groups occurred with members of community coalitions in each of the five counties involved in the HT project. Community coalitions were formed at the beginning of the HT project to guide community-level project development, decision-making, and implementation (Jones et al., 2021; Sanders et al., 2022). Coalition members worked closely with university and extension faculty and staff and were primarily self-appointed to the coalition due to their formal or informal leadership roles in the community. Every county had one community coalition, comprised of community members who had often worked together previously on community organizations, projects, and volunteer opportunities. Focus group participants were recruited through local county extension agents in each community who acted liaisons between the community coalition and the university-based project implementation team. Focus groups occurred outside of regularly scheduled coalition meetings and were scheduled based on the availability of most participants. Locations for the focus groups varied depending on accessibility - County #1 and County #2 was held at the county cooperative extension office; County #3 was held in the community garden; County #4 was held at a local restaurant.

Focus groups were selected as the primary data collection method as "interview material is the easiest to work with because it most closely resembles natural, everyday talk that in turn can be portrayed in ways that evoke the reader" (Butler-Kisber, 2002, p. 235). The focus groups allowed for the co-constructive examination, understanding, investigation of the collective identities of those participating in a health promotion project aimed to change some aspects of their community. Because Sanders and Lamm (2022) developed poetic transcriptions from interview data from the HT project, this study looked to develop this methodology further through exploration in focus group data, presenting a new methodology tentatively titled "poetic dialogues." Focus groups were conducted from May to July of 2022 and lasted an average of an hour and a half each, with a range between four and 15 participants, with 36 participants across the four communities. We did not collect survey data for participant self-disclosure of demographic data; however, most of the focus group participants were active members of the coalitions that were implementing the program in their communities. Many had lived in the community for most of their life or were born but returned after retirement. Many were of retirement age, while a few were actively working in the municipal government. All focus group participants could be considered project implementers rather than community members receiving benefits from the program; this represents a limitation in the perspectives presented in the results section.

Questions in the moderator guide for the focus group were developed through an appreciative inquiry evaluation lens, focusing on the best of what a program has to offer (Preskill & Catsambas, 2006), and inquired about participants' role in the project, successes of the project over the last year, the impact of the project on the community, and community members' acceptance of the project. Only four out of the five counties had a focus group occurring in year four due to project staff limitations in one of the counties that prevented the planning of a focus group there. Focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed by a third-party transcription service. The University of Georgia Institutional Review Board approved the data collection procedures prior to implementation. Participants provided verbal consent for participation after the focus group moderator provided an overview of the data collection and dissemination process at the beginning of the focus group session.

Data Analysis

Crafting the poetic dialogues included the extraction of phrases from the focus group transcripts to tell the story of the social and intangible (or less quantifiable) impacts of the community-based health promotion project. To create each poem, the primary author selected phrases which embodied the intangible social impacts described by participants and eliminated certain words, such as those that directly discussed project logistics, which would distract from the narrative of the intangible impact. Intangible impacts were operationalized as those that could not be quantified - including increased community togetherness. The primary author (C.S.) relied on MacLure's (2013b) conceptualization of wonder in data, where a qualitative analyst uses affective moments of surprise to recognize invitations within the data, and "once invited in, [the] task [is] to experiment and see where it takes [you]" (p. 231). MacLure (2013a, 2013b) uses moments of wonder, or affective intensity, that emanate from data transcripts to explore data through an alternative lens, remaining attuned to one's embodied interactions and reactions to the data, such as a feeling in one's gut or a quickening heartbeat that alerts us there is something within the data that wants to be communicated. Using MacLure's (2013a, 2013b) wonder as analytic practice, 1 focused on embodied moments of recognition within the focus group transcripts that prompted me not only to feel an affective reaction to the data, but also to explore the meaning behind the data about the social impacts beyond those listed in the quantified project goals. One example of an affective moment, seen in the poem for County #4, was when the focus group participants called a member of their group who could not make the meeting. This was a moment of both humor and pride, seeing the positive spirit exemplified by bragging on the accomplishments of their collaborators within the coalition. Specifically, using wonder as an orienting analytical concept, 1 recognized phrases in the transcripts that represented how participants would reflect on the project's impact on their community-moments when the participants revealed pieces of their identity, both self-identity as well as collective perceptions of their community, in ways they might not have consciously recognized during the dialogical process. Within the focus group setting, this includes capturing the ways in which participants co-constructed meaning as a source of analytic inspiration. For example, as compared to poetic transcriptions in interviews, constructing poetic dialogues relied on the dialogic process that occurred between participants, using formatting changes such as left and right justification to mimic the feeling of following a conversation in real time.

MacLure's (2013a, 2013b) analytic method aligns with Butler-Kisber (2018), who outlined the process as reading your data through a different lens, "letting the writing possibilities 'cook' inside" (р. 100). Then, "pull out the phrases that will "breathe life into the poem,' highlighting any words that might help shape the poem" (Butler-Kisber, 2018, p. 100), or highlight the words believed to be most essential to the data transcript (Langer & Furman, 2004). After highlighting key words and phrases, phrases are then combined, using the researcher's poetic license, or creative wordplay to infuse lyricism into the construction process, to portray a sense of rhythm and flow. Finally, identify any key words within the transcript that give insight to the core of the poem, and use those words within the title of the poem (Butler-Kisber, 2018). As a last step, read aloud the poem, to oneself and to others, to recreate the oral tradition within poetic tradition (Ward, 2011). Poetry has an oral tradition; thus, reading the poem out loud provides a different perspective, engaging in different senses than one normally engages when reading research results. Through reading the poems aloud, you can explore the affective connotations brought to the data through the poetic construction process. Additionally, reading poems aloud can also serve as a member checking process. Having an opportunity to share poetic dialogues with participants can offer a way to check if your re-construction of participants' words aligns with their perspective of the project, the process, and the potential output. The poetic process requires re-visitation, re-reading, and revisions of phrases from the transcriptions, enhancing the idea that poetry as a qualitative method is a "living, breathing narrative that aims to inspire an intellectual and emotional response from the reader" (Davis, 2021, p. 116). Sanders and Lamm (2022) provide a more detailed account of constructing poetic transcriptions from interview transcript data; the current poetic dialogues follow this approach remaining consistent with the chronology of the data transcript. Maintaining fidelity to the chronology helped support the development of the conversational dialogue we meant to convey through the poetic dialogue format, compared to taking a more liberal approach to narrative construction outside of the chronological boundary.

The primary author constructed the data poems both recognizing her positionality in the project as an evaluator and building off her experience moderating the focus groups. The poetic dialogues were reviewed and underwent peer debriefing with the secondary and tertiary authors to enhance the trustworthiness of the data (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The peer debriefing process did not significantly change the resulting poems, aside from slight wording changes related to dialect and its representation through the written word. The secondary author was the evaluation team leader and had deep knowledge of the communities, while the third author was not a member of the HT project and provided an external perspective on the poetic dialogues. Additionally, the poetic dialogues were shared with the four communities at coalition meetings for the HT project to provide an opportunity for member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) as well as promote dialogue around evaluation results dissemination. While the poetic dialogues were shared only at coalition meetings by the research team, participants were provided with copies of the poems to distribute in the community. Throughout the poetic construction process, the primary author wrote analytic memos detailing her initial interpretations of the focus group data (Davis, 2021), which served as an audit trail and peer debrief resource to further enhance trustworthiness of the data (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Findings

The poetic dialogues presented below are chronologically true to the transcripts, with words selected and constructed from focus group transcripts to focus on the socio-cultural and intangible impacts of the HT project. Additionally, each transition in the justification (right or left) in the formatting indicates a new participant speaking, to echo the conversational feel of a focus group setting. City and county names were removed from the poetic dialogues to preserve participant confidentiality.

County #1

For County #1, a lot of connections were made between the county's agricultural history and how the project has helped rebuild a bit of what was lost of that culture due to industry job loss. County #1 (alongside County #5) has been involved in HT since 2016 as part of the pilot project prior to the five-year funding granted in 2018 expanding to three other counties. Social ties have been a topic of discussion of the impacts of HT in this county (see Randall et al., 2023; Sanders et al., 2023), demonstrating the high value placed on social relationships and collaboration by participating coalition members.

Together as Partners

[Ours] is a city that really shouldn't be here.

Given its age,

most of the towns were founded on

creeks or rivers.

There were two towns in [our] county originally.

Both of them wanted to county seat.

The compromise was that it would be

halfway between the two.

So, they tied a rag to a wagon wheel,

Counted the number of revolutions the rag made

Between the two towns,

divided by two,

drove a stake in the ground.

That stake,

or whatever's left of it,

15 under the courthouse.

We've always had gardens.

That's how we maintained back in the day.

The gardens are just an extension of what we've done in the past.

I think we'll always have gardens,

Especially as the food prices go up.

We're also heavy on the agricultural side.

We are a single community.

We're one town,

we re one community,

we re one neighborhood.

We look out after each other,

we know each other,

we speak to each other.

That's one of the things about being a small community.

And that has a lot to do in being able to communicate

The cultural shifts that we're trying to obtain.

They listen because we are their neighbors and they know us,

we know them.

They listened to what we had to say

and they responded.

We are seeing a change in the mentality of the government

Where they are starting to look at the community as a whole.

They re beginning to see their role in a different way.

That is a major cultural shift.

Major cultural shift.

It makes a difference when you have a person that is

so involved and

so dedicated.

It makes a difference when folks actually show up

and start helping.

That made a world of difference.

Yes,

we appreciate those who come from outside,

who have helped us and given us ideas,

We appreciate y'all more than you know.

But this is us doing that now

with who we have,

now.

It's not a dream,

it's a reality.

It's giving us a mindset to think healthier.

Get more involved with our health.

Because in the south,

If it ain't fried,

we don't want it.

It's hands-on learning,

Not only to cover the standards,

But also life lessons.

We are beginning to influence each other

in the things and the choices we make.

Our community can be defined as

Faith,

Family,

Friends.

Faith...

we are all fairly religious people.

That affects how we treat each other.

Family...

We are very family oriented.

We care about our families.

We love our families.

We want to provide for our families.

Friends...

We like each other.

We are a community.

Those three things make us a community.

That's our heart right there.

When you grow up like that,

and then you travel somewhere else,

they look at you crazy.

You really understand what that is.

We work together as partners

in everything we do.

In the poetic dialogue above, one can see the integral role history plays in building project momentum. Participants described how the project helped rebuild an agricultural heritage that had been lost. Additionally, the importance of community-centered change is key, not only for project momentum but for sustainability over the long-term. Through connecting with a community"s collective identity, which can be identified through dialogue about history and heritage, and leveraging existing social ties and relationships, community-centered change can be much more impactful, though those change efforts may take longer to see. As emphasized through the participants" voices, successful programming must include friends, family, and faith as a mechanism for increasing healthy living and lifestyle behavior changes to be congruent with the collective identity of those living in the county.

County #2

County 42 was one of the three counties to which HT expanded in 2018 and thus was in the fourth year of the project during the focus groups. This county has strong municipal partnerships and participation within the coalition, as well as dedicated community members 1n the coalition. Additionally, this county was the only county to create their own HT brand using symbols from their community (an outline of a monument in the county) to streamline all health promotion projects in the community into a unified message.

This is What We're Doing. This is How We're Doing It.

Our community history is that we're a small town.

Most of our history 15 from our older generations that live here.

I know both my grandparents moved up here and lived up here,

and my family's from around here.

Most of the stories we're going to hear

you can get throughout the town,

through the generations come up.

They're all going to be passed down from family member to family member.

The longer people are here,

the older a generation can live a little bit longer,

the longer those stories stay around town

and become a part of everyday life.

I also think it's giving everyone a voice.

That's the bigger impact.

[It's] a collaboration.

It helps to support the efforts that the city has engaged in promoting our history...

Making these points of interest accessible.

Living in a small community, we really are a culture of faith.

When you're used to eating a certain way in a culture,

collard greens or ham hock,

you're still eating what you're eating, but you're eating it in a

healthier way.

People are engaging and

they re curious about wanting to change

or trying something different.

They re ready for the next step.

They want it and they want more.

The idea of asking someone to change habits or traditions is challenging.

"I grew up like this."

"That's how it's always been."

Well, that may be the case,

but now we see the downside of putting that stuff in your body.

The mindset,

the idea of changing that habit,

is where the challenge is in everything we do.

People's mindsets are changing.

Acceptance.

Willing to listen.

"This is what we're doing."

"This is how we're doing it."

It has shown others what infrastructures and organizations can do together by

listening to the voice of the people.

In the poetic transcription, participants described the intangible impacts of HT as creating a cultural shift in the minds of community members, specifically related to healthy living. Participants also highlighted centering community voices in project development, using words such as "we" and "collaboration" to evidence the importance of collective community voice in project sustainability. The concept of a living heritage was also identified, where participants evolve the original project goals, of increasing healthy lifestyles and decreasing instances of dietrelated chronic disease, to extend the need for healthy living to preserve their heritage for future generations. Further, one can see the realization of project goals: "you're still eating what you're eating but you re eating it in / a healthier way."

County #3

The coalition in County #3 had a very strong core group of coalition members who worked in the community garden but had the smallest number of participants in the focus group. Additionally, the focus group itself took place in the middle of the garden, in the hot Georgia summer, literally surrounded by the fruits of their labor. Due to a smaller overall participation by County #3 in membership numbers, the intangible impacts were important to highlight the abstract successes of the HT coalition here, compared to quantitative metrics of success related to food access and physical activity.

Opportunity to be Social.

I have a friend

he'll call me and say,

can you drop me some lettuce by the house?

Or whatever they're cooking that night,

See if there's anything in the garden ready for his supper.

I get phone calls too, saying

"Hey, what can you bring?"

I've got about ten people

I take stuff to.

But they have family at home.

We reach close to one hundred people.

At least a hundred or more.

I'm not opposed going

door to door.

We don't mind.

We love getting together.

There's a lot of pride in a small community.

I had friends come here after I moved,

they said,

"What do you do?"

I said,

"I sit on my front porch."

People in the country gather together,

I must have had eight on my front porch last night.

It's great to come back into and retire in.

It's pretty,

And it's laid back.

It's changed a lot.

We have lost our doctors.

We've lost our hospital.

We ve lost just about every business downtown.

We ve lost a lot,

Gained a lot.

For me, it's just what I'm looking for in life.

It's a community in survival mode.

There used to be people employed farming.

That's why the community was healthy.

My neighbors,

after they saw our garden,

started these little raised gardens on their side of the yard.

The gardens give people the opportunity

to be social.

You benefit from the fresh vegetables,

but you get to be healthy in other ways,

just by having those conversations.

Instead of sitting on the phone,

they can spread community news face-to-face.

The project has enabled us to show the community

that you deserve more.

There's more that you should have access to.

To give people that don't always have a

voice at the table

a voice to raise those concerns.

The poetic dialogue above highlights several intangible impacts from the project within this county. First, social networks are key for the diffusion of project resources, both gardens produce as well as health knowledge. It is clear how community pride and deeply entrenched social relationships have enabled large community diffusion of the project through non-formalized paths. There were also social impacts from the gardens. Being a retirement community primarily, there were fewer opportunities for older residents to engage in safe outdoor social and physical activities, especially during and after COVID-19. The gardens were a place where conversations could occur outdoors, rather than mediated through technology. One participant also described the importance of having a project like this in their community, showing them that they deserve more than they have access to, connecting back to and building upon pride present in the community.

County #4

There was a moment during the focus group for County 4 that captured the energetic social dynamics of this county's coalition group. As we sat around a table at the local restaurant, treated to a spaghetti dinner and fellowship, I asked the general focus group questions accompanied by the sounds of cutlery scratching at plates. Other community members, who knew members of the coalition, would stop by and say hello to see what we were up to. At one point, participating coalition members were ideating about a new walking path they wanted around the county courthouse. One of the waiters at the restaurant happened to also be a local handyman, and the women of the focus group beckoned him over, asking for him to do the measurements for the walking path signage they wanted to put up. At another moment in the focus group, I asked a question about community garden participation throughout the year. One of the coalition's most lauded volunteers was unable to make the focus group, but the participating coalition members decided that, rather than estimate the number of people who visited the community garden during the year, they would call this coalition member and have him join in the conversation. Bobby (pseudonym) was the garden manager and the one who spent the most hours working at the community garden. The following poetic dialogue captures the spirit of the coalition in County 4 and the social camaraderie that is so integral to the momentum and growth of the project over the last four years. The poetic transcription, "Let's Call Bobby!," epitomizes Hill's (2005) assertion that, "as a researcher, I am definitely of the portrait but not necessarily in the portrait" (p. 104). Moments representing this intra-action, where my direct perspective is integrated into the representation of participant voices, are contained in brackets.

Let's Call Bobby!

I've met some wonderful people.

For me, that's been the high point.

Working with people that I wouldn't otherwise know

from my neighborhood or whatever.

So, for me,

The community has been really a blessing.

We ve come together,

all of us,

trying to make a plan that's going to be better for our community.

The garden...

They do stuff out of the ordinary.

They let everybody know.

They make you welcome.

When you go to visit, they make you just as welcome.

[Bobby] shows you around.

He act like he's been here all his life.

He act like he's a country boy.

He shows you around.

He loves to talk about the garden.

Buddy could give you those numbers,

but he couldn't make it tonight.

Hey, Bobby, how you doing?

[I listen. |

I'm fine, Bobby.

How many guests you think y'all have at the garden?

What, a year? Or...

However you want to name it.

15 or 20 a month at the most in the summertime.

You know I'm sitting here

with the coalition?

They were trying to find out.

Thank you darling.

Hold on,

Judy has a question.

Bobby,

Didn't you keep records of the poundage of stuff

People took?

I did.

It was over 900 pounds.

I tried to reach a thousand,

but we didn't quite make it.

He's a 900 pounder. He knows it.

Anybody want anything for their gardens?

I've got plenty of okra.

This is what makes Bobby, Bobby.

Thank you, Bobby.

We don't know about okra plants right now.

We may come get some later.

Well, tell them ГП think about them when I make that delicious okra.

Thanks, Bobby.

Bobby has that garden on his mind 24/7.

Anytime you call him,

even if you stop by his house,

He'll say,

"Oh look, come look at the gardens."

"I got extra plants."

"I got this for you."

"You need some of these."

That's what makes the garden so successful.

Bobby's vision.

Camaraderie and fellowship were important aspects of the project and coalition networking for County #4. This fellowship helped the coalition build upon a collective vision for the project, emerging from a shared initiative from community members. Not only did the project help coalition members expand their social connections, but it also helped strengthen existing social ties to build momentum for creating a healthier community. Additionally, the poetic dialogue above captures just how important key people are for actualizing transformative change. The collective identity of the coalition seemed to coalesce under the reverence and respect had for key players in the community who kept momentum going, even in times of struggle such as COVID-19.

Discussion

The poetic dialogues presented demonstrate the ability of arts-based ways of knowing and methodologies to more fully communicate the impacts of community-based health promotion programming to stakeholders, from funders to community members. Voice was a theme echoed through several poetic dialogues, which were not easily captured by the other qualitative and descriptive modes of analysis used in the overall program assessment. The concept of voice was identified from an empowerment, and community-centered perspective, but also through engendering camaraderie, fellowship, and social ties that are critical to the collective identities present in these rural communities. Living heritage was also important within County #2, viewing healthy living to ensure their identities, traditions, and culture can be passed down along generations. At the core of many poetic dialogues was the idea that social relationships are a key asset within these communities, a finding that is consistent with other literature (Kumpulainen, 2017; Meador, 2019; Wiesinger, 2007). However, social impacts of programming are often one of the most complex impacts to capture when evaluating programs (Borron et al., 2019), further justifying the need for alternative methodologies to capture abstract and intangible program impacts. Looking at project development moving forward, leveraging these social ties that manifested in different ways in the poetic dialogues can be a way to help ensure sustainability of projects in rural communities, especially after funding cycles end. From an evaluative standpoint, communicating the importance of social ties back to funding stakeholders is critical, especially when the importance of these relationships cannot be captured completely through traditional evaluation measurements.

The methodology of poetic dialogues highlights the entangled relationship between researcher and researched (Glesne, 1997; Sanders & Lamm, 2022), important for an evaluator's perspective who has been fully involved in the project for three and a half years. While I was not directly involved in program implementation, I did participate with the program implementation team in monthly calls, as well as having frequent visits throughout the years to the communities. Thus, finding a methodology that put my entanglement in a more obvious manner was important, as my observations, knowledge, and experiences with the project was not extractable from the interpretation of the data. Rather than focusing on effusing the evaluation with a sense of objectivity, I wanted to explore a methodology that used my entanglement as an asset rather than a detriment. However, it is important to note that an unattached evaluator/researcher would likely have a different interpretation and construction of poetic dialogues; thus, future research experimenting with this method might reflect more on the positionality of the researcher and its impact on the poetic construction process.

In rural communities specifically, due to lack of geographic access and the nature of slow cultural shifts that occur in response to change, traditional modes of evaluation may not fully capture the impacts of a project and thus not communicate to stakeholders effectively what the project is doing on the ground and in the minds of community members. When working in rural communities, like those in the HT project, narrative forms of data analysis that allow for the emergence of heritage, tradition, and community pride can help program participants see the change they create that is then communicated back to funding stakeholders. Urban cultural hegemony may limit the ability of external professionals to appropriately serve rural communities, due to assumptions underlying policy and practice perpetuated by dominant cultural norms in urban areas (Thomas et al., 2011). A critical lens aimed at illuminating these unchecked cultural assumptions as well as highlighting the kaleidoscopic voices, perspectives, and values that constitute rural communities may allow for more appropriate forms of evaluation that can help communicate both the tangible and, sometimes more importantly, the intangible impacts in rural community change efforts. Additionally, poetic dialogues are not reliant on the numbers of participants to yield rich data (see County #3 in results). Not only did the small number of participants allow for a more intimate setting to get deep data from participants, the benefit of the poetic dialogue is that, through playful formatting, you can also echo the cacophony (or lack thereof) of the focus group setting itself, which can shift and change depending on the number of participants. It also is a method that can be used across settings in equitable ways, because the richness of the data does not rely on hitting a threshold of participants. As mentioned, some counties had higher community participation in the program than others, which from a funding standpoint seemed more of a success. But the poetic dialogue allowed the evaluators to hone in on the intangible social impacts that were very important for the community that might not have been highlighted with traditional qualitative or quantitative methods.

Poetic transcription and poetic dialogues, while rich, narrative modes of communicating impact, does not suffice as the only evaluation method for large grant projects. However, including poetic forms of analysis can help create more holistic forms of impact assessment, beyond what quantitative measures and qualitative themes can be evidenced alone. Poetic analysis remains an experimental form of writing in evaluation research (Johnson et al., 2013; Sanders & Lamm, 2022); however, this experimentation allows for the exploration of data outside traditional positivist or interpretivist paradigms that often dominate evaluative thinking (Sanders & Lamm, 2022). Poems help evoke an emotional response from their reader, which helps communicate the intangible changes that occur within community-based program development and implementation not often captured in traditional evaluation approaches. In rural communities especially, change can happen slowly, which is not always conducive to traditional formative and summative evaluation measures. Thus, there is a need for culturally responsive methods of measurement that accurately communicate change back to both community and funding stakeholders because change in rural areas can look very different than change from their urban counterparts.

One limitation to the methodology is that participants were not actively involved in poetic construction itself. Building from methodological reflections from Sanders and Lamm (2022), the primary author engaged in the poetic dialogue process to explore evaluation data in a novel form, reflecting on the insights generated when arts-based approaches are used as a primary analytic method compared to basic qualitative methods, such as thematic analysis. However, this means that the poems produced by the researcher construction only presented one interpretation of the data. While measures were implemented to try to involve participants after the construction took place, such as dissemination at the coalition meetings, analytic insights that could have emerged from a more participatory process were not able to be explored. Future research using this method should engage in participatory construction processes to capture the collective meaning-making that can occur both from participants reviewing their comments from data collection as well as how they would construct their own collective voice.

Due to the presentation of the poetic dialogues above and the situatedness of my role in the project, it is important to reflect on the limitations of this methodology, especially as a standalone method of evaluation. My own entanglement with the data was conceptualized here as an asset to the methodology; however, this is an important point of reflection on the potential use of this methodology more broadly. Because I was deeply involved with the project over a number of years, I developed emotional attachments to the communities. Much of my desire for conducting an arts-based methodology emerged from a dissatisfaction I had with the inadequacy of the evaluation methods to capture the richness of the communities we were working in, especially as our funding guidelines relied so much on evaluation counts, such as numbers of walking paths created or number of community gardens connected to distribution centers in the community. However, by my own entanglement with the data, there might be a risk of overlooking more critical needs of the project that need to be addressed to be responsive to the communities. The poetic dialogues here were explicitly constructed to identify social impacts, which I knew were missing from our other evaluation measures. I would not have known this was missing without my time spent with the communities; however, there could have also been a sense of emotional investment on my part that interfered with the interpretation of the data. There may be opportunities to engage with this method without looking for a priori considerations (like social impact), which might reveal tensions and challenges experienced by participants. Additionally, I may be overlooking limitations in the methodological process because it filled a specified gap I noticed. Thus, 1 encourage readers to reflect on potential limitations of the methodology and the need to balance it with other, perhaps more positivist approaches to evaluation, to encourage a holistic approach to assessing program impact and efficacy.

Regarding practical implementation, storytelling and narrative formats can enhance impact evaluation assessments and the communication of program impact, especially in community development settings (Вай, 2016). Member checks not only serve to validate narrative results but also offer an opportunity for interaction between evaluator and participant that breaks down the traditional roles of evaluator and evaluated. As part of evaluation results dissemination, poetic dialogues were read in each county as part of the annual report out for formative evaluation. Community members subsequently asked for copies of the poems to distribute in their community to share their impact. Evaluators framed the poems as tools community members can use, developed from their own, insider voices, to tell the story of their community development and health promotion work. By framing poetic narratives from this grassroots perspective, evaluators can offer a tool for community members to increase their reach and outreach with other community groups and municipal leaders to garner increased support and participation for the project. Additionally, practitioners need not to have literary training to conduct poetic analysis in this manner, but relying on the affective method outlined by MacLure (2013a, 2013b) allows practitioners to rely on their own knowledge of participants, in collaboration with them through member checks or even concurrent poetic transcription with participants, to help tell the story of the project in a way that resonates beyond facts and figures. Thus, this methodology should be accessible to those wishing to implement it due to the flexibility of analysis.

As a final note, having conducted this methodology with both interviews (Sanders & Lamm, 2022) and focus groups, we feel the adaptability of the poetic form to the structure of the data collection method presents an opportunity for creative interpretation on behalf of the researcher. As mentioned, the poetic dialogues attempted to reflect, structurally, the bouncing nature of conversation through right and left justification. In previous work, using just interview data (Sanders & Lamm, 2022), we used traditional left justification to mimic the idea of a single individual telling their story. While interviews allow you to capture an individual's story, the poetic dialogues allowed us to more fully capture the experience and shared meaning construction of participants that are key components of focus group methodology. The poetic form offers additional opportunities in structure and form for other researchers and practitioners looking to reflect their data collection and interpretation in an arts-based method.

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