The Social Connections Mapping Tool
The Social Connections Mapping Tool (SCMT) is a methodology aimed at gaining a closer understanding of the social relationships that people draw upon to promote their own wellbeing.
How does it work?
Participatory workshops with target populations (such as service beneficiaries and/or providers) identify the social connections perceived as most relevant in a particular context. These identified connections form the basis of the anonymous survey.
This allows users to explore - with a wider beneficiary population - the levels of contact, trust, and reciprocity in their social connections.
What can it be used for?
The SCMT tool is designed to meet the data collection needs of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in diverse environments. It can be deployed as a needs assessment tool, as a monitoring and evaluation tool for ongoing interventions and as an evidence-gathering tool in research and policy.
The novelty of the tool resides in the flexibility it offers, collecting individual and relational data in a user-friendly way, and in its grounded approach of identifying participants’ perceptions of the resources available to them.
Gathering Responses
Once the survey is created, users can disseminate it to individuals through a link generated specifically for each individual, or to groups through a static link.
Respondents can complete the survey on any mobile or internet-enabled device. In situations with intermittent internet access respondents can complete the survey offline, with the tool automatically uploading data when the device has a stable connection.
As they complete the survey, respondents can switch between any number of languages.
Data Visualisations
As respondents complete the survey, the tool provides real-time visual analyses of individual and collective responses in the form of connections maps.
Users can download the resulting dataset as well as individual responses, as well as the visualisations provided by the tool, for further analysis or dissemination.
What can we offer?
The tool is maintained by the Migration, Integration and Social Connections (MISC) research group at Queen Margaret University’s Institute for Global Health and Development. MISC members provide partners with support and training towards conducting participatory social connections workshops and access to the SCMT digital tool along with guidance and technical support for its deployment.
How has the tool been used and with which partners?
The tool is being used in a variety of global contexts and for a variety of purposes. It is currently used to support a number of EU-funded refugee integration services in the UK. Working in partnership with the British Red Cross and the Scottish Refugee Council, the tool is deployed as a practice development tool that helps practitioners and beneficiaries to develop personal integration plans and simultaneously as an evidence-gathering tool for policy-oriented research.
Recently, it has been used in the evaluation of Freedom from Torture’s ‘Healing Neighbourhoods Project’. Globally, building on previous deployments in research around gender-based violence in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2014, the tool is currently being used in a large-scale GCRF-funded research programme. The study examines health-seeking behaviour amongst displaced refugees in South Africa, Kenya, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo contrasting experiences in refugee camps and urban settings. Uses of the tool extend to the measurement of connection and trust within closed networks. For example, MHPSS.net deployed the tool to contribute to an internal evaluation of efficiency of communication within a local professional network in Sri Lanka.