Using Interactive Dashboards to Make Research Findings from State Education and Foster Care Data More Accessible

Research consistently shows that students in foster care have lower academic performance and educational attainment than their peers who have not experienced foster care placements. Experiencing school moves after a foster care placement further complicates their outcomes. Although this information is well documented for researchers and in the policy literature, it often remains unknown to a broader audience, particularly those who regularly interact with students and have more direct opportunities to support their educational journeys. This highlights the need for more innovative and accessible methods for disseminating data and research findings.

To that end, this workshop will explore how to use Tableau for research dissemination efforts with statewide quantitative data. Tableau is a data visualization tool that offers an innovative way to disseminate data and research findings, ensuring they are accessible to diverse audiences.

To demonstrate how Tableau can be used for data dissemination, workshop facilitators will provide a concrete example of how they used the tool in their recent work. Specifically, the workshop will feature the creation of an interactive dashboard used to display data results from an analysis of educational outcomes for students in Virginia’s foster care system. In the research, facilitators examined data from the Virginia Longitudinal Data System (VLDS), merging state data from the Virginia Department of Social Services (DSS) and the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to explore the extent to which moving schools impacted the academic performance and educational attainment of students in foster care over 13 years. During the workshop, facilitators will present two interactive dashboards created from this research, allowing participants to “play” with the dashboards and engage directly with the data. By demonstrating an interactive and effective way for social work researchers to communicate findings, the workshop aims to enhance the translation and accessibility of research to the general public.

Workshop goals: The primary goal of this workshop is to explore how Tableau can be applied in social work research, using a concrete example from a recent quantitative project.

During the workshop, facilitators will:

• Present example dashboards from the identified project.
• Walk participants through the process of building dashboards using quantitative data in Tableau.
• Highlight best practices in dashboard design, stakeholder collaboration, and managing data, particularly when dealing with vulnerable populations and multiple agencies.
• Discuss the importance of using Tableau to broaden the reach of social work research.
• Explain how social work researchers can utilize data visualization to advocate for improved outcomes for vulnerable populations.

Learning Objectives: By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Recognize the significance of data visualization tools like Tableau in social work research.
• Discuss the role of data visualization in expanding access to research and data for wider audiences.

This workshop is designed for individuals looking to leverage data visualization to improve access to research and present data in more understandable ways for broader audiences.