To make sense of complex data, research must go beyond numbers. Alex Prior shows how the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), a structured method for analysing and communicating policy through storytelling, can help contextualise quantitative outcomes and make them more accessible and meaningful to diverse audiences.

In research, a wealth of rich quantitative data is little use without accompanying qualitative information that can contextualise them and enable their understanding. To be effective and to reach stakeholders, research needs to tell a story beyond numbers. This issue has a broad social significance given the risk of misinterpretation and inaccessibility when publishing outcomes as data, and points to need for a transferable, intuitive framework for conceptualising, contextualising, and communicating quantitative outcomes.

Telling stories with data: lessons from the Life Chances Fund and GO Lab

The Life Chances Fund is a £70 million outcomes fund hosted by the Department of Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS) of the United Kingdom. Together with a group of local commissioners, this fund supports 29 social impact bonds in England. Social impact bonds, also known as social outcomes partnerships, are an innovative way of commissioning public services where payments are tied to contractually specified outcomes (instead of outputs or activities), and the upfront capital to start the service is provided by a social investor. From homelessness to mental health, from employment to social prescribing, the Life Chances Fund projects work in partnership with the third and private sectors to address some of the most challenging social issues of our time.

The Government Outcomes Lab (GO Lab) is the evaluation and learning partner for the Life Chances Fund. As part of a learning and transparency agenda, the GO Lab published interim performance data on this group of social outcomes partnerships. The abundance of quantitative data was encouraging, but the lack of contextual narratives to make sense of those numbers presented a problem. The GO Lab asked these projects to share a narrative about their interim achievements that was published below each chart. Such stories encourage an approach to information-sharing that is comprehensive, collaborative and contextual.

Presenting outcome achievement data without sufficient context could lead to misinterpretations.

Contextualising impact bond information carries several benefits given that “presenting outcome achievement data without sufficient context could lead to misinterpretations”. The GO Lab also notes that “stakeholders involved in the Life Chances Fund are keen to share their achievements, but also”, understandably, “want to ensure that the data is analysed and understood in the right context”.

An additional impetus for contextualising data is to avoid a simple, reductive dichotomy of success/failure, or loss/gain. There are important lessons to learn from ‘non-achievements’; these lessons can be effectively communicated and understood by telling data-driven stories.

Based on these observations, the GO Lab’s data-driven stories must:

• Enrich and complement the data on the INDIGO Impact Bond Dataset
• Bring analytical rigour based on an objective frame of reference
• Provide this frame of reference based on lessons, not on success/failure or loss/gain

The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) enables a structured way to approach and deliver on all three requirements.

The Narrative Policy Framework

Jones & McBeth define a narrative as “a story with a temporal sequence of events…unfolding in a plot…populated by dramatic moments, symbols, and archetypal characters…that culminates in a moral”. The usefulness of narrative frameworks lies in their cultural (and cognitive) ubiquity: narratives are an intuitive way to communicate, organise and interpret information. They are also key to understanding policy problems, which resemble narratives in terms of both structure and ‘characters’, as contends.

There is often an assumption that [narrative] does not, or cannot, sit well with quantitative studies.

However, narratives and data are frequently (and unfairly) presented as different, even antithetical, hence “the plural of anecdote is not data”, an aphorism often attributed to Raymond Wolfinger, who in fact said the opposite. Moreover, when invoking narratives in social science, there is often an assumption that this does not, or cannot, sit well with quantitative studies.

To address this assumption, the NPF was envisaged “as a quantitative, structuralist, and positivist approach…both empirical and falsifiable”. It provides a narrative approach to policy problems, strategies and solutions, identifying four structural elements. The elements include Setting (when, where, and how did it all begin?), Plot (what is the purpose and what are the means?), Characters (who is involved?) and Moral (what’s the answer and/or the lesson?).

Framing evidence in an engaging way

There are many possible foci for setting/context, plot, characters, and moral. This is both necessary and beneficial considering the GO Lab’s provision of a space for project stakeholders to add reflective material and links to external resources. In populating (or even building) a narrative collaboratively, the GO Lab can frame evidence in an engaging and enlightening way.

To this end, the NPF facilitates structure and engagement. Settings and morals provide flexible timelines, with challenges and non-successes placed – and contextualised – within a narrative of experience, lessons and long-term solutions instead of isolated successes/failures or losses/gains. In addition, the GO Lab and relevant organisations can, with stakeholder input, study the characters in the narrative and their relationship to that narrative.

Choosing the right narrative for a project

One of the most immediate questions when applying the NPF relates to the choice of a reference frame: in other words, the strategic context against which projects can not only be understood but also analysed, as Jones and McBeth claim, “to track the development and movement of these stories” in an empirical way.

As illustrated in the figure above by impact bond projects, there are many different reference frames to choose from when building a narrative. These can be specific to the fund or project, or reflective of the broader organisational strategy or values.

Having established a frame of reference with which to situate, contextualise and analyse, the empirical element would entail studying the possible variable/s against it, for example the degree of coherence between stakeholder views and specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Narratives provide not only structure but engagement.

Narratives provide not only structure but engagement, hence the GO Lab’s ambition that “you, the users, will seek to understand a more complete story about these projects”. Users are vital to narratives, not just as characters but as audience members, “complet[ing] the outline based on their own fantasies, emotional circumstances, and ideologies as expressed through well-known narrative themes”, according to Bennett & Edelman.

These narratives can be structured, objective, and engaging, but they require an appropriate framework. The NPF provides this, ensuring that the GO Lab’s efforts are not only analysed and presented, but actively enriched. More broadly, the use of stories – typically associated with qualitative research – can make quantitative data comprehensible and engaging for a range of audiences.

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This blog article was written with substantial input and support from the Government Outcomes Lab (GO Lab), a global centre of expertise based at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Their mission is to enable governments across the world to foster effective partnerships with the non-profit and private sectors for better outcomes.

The content generated on this blog is for information purposes only. This Article gives the views and opinions of the authors and does not reflect the views and opinions of the Impact of Social Science blog (the blog), nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

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