Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

After presenting the community assessment report at our September task force meeting we wanted to give members of the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force more time to read and digest the report and offer us feedback. So we organized an hour long listening session on zoom so that members could write or speak their comments questions. A true community assessment seeks to engage everyone in the community and use their feedback. As members of the community we are assessing, we have a unique level of access and familiarity with the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force. This is an important caveat to our assessment approach because it involves starting an open dialogue between the Human Trafficking Research Lab and the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force agencies in a concerted effort to analyze the data and allows the entities involved to buy into the data collection and the community assessment. We had about 15 task force members attend and some offered valuabl

Recently, I have been working with Dr. Dean to finalize our community assessment. The community assessment was a survey sent out to members of the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force to assess the task force as part of the Department of Justice grant requirements. The survey was available to complete online or via a telephone call in which I would ask the members of the task force the questions and record their answers. It included questions in which respondents could rate the effectiveness of our task and identify its strengths and weaknesses. Our goal was to assess the effectiveness now as a pre-test in hopes that in three years, when we complete a post-test community assessment, the members of the task force will be more satisfied with their work. After the survey was completed, we began to assess the information. I worked on the qualitative information, i.e. the answers in which respondents were able to type out their response as a fill in the blank. I looked through the