Позитивные изменения. Том 2, № 2 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 2 (2022)

"Thanks to the Clean Games, the people change their attitudes and thinking about the environment and environmental issues, and everything is done in a playful and entertaining manner."

Most of the answers to this question mentioned the game format, competition and team building, leaving aside any environmental topics. For example:

"The excitement, the celebration, and the positive mood and fellowship that people begin to feel in the process."

"It is an interesting format. I feel like the organizer of a big and important event."

"It's a good thing. You make me feel like I'm part of a big, useful cause."

However, the project goal was not simply cleaning up the garbage or holding an entertainment event for the public, but rather increasing the people’s awareness and engagement in the environmental agenda. When even the organizers miss the social significance of the project and instead talk about its secondary attributes such as the format and atmosphere, it is clear that the social impact remains merely an accessory factor.

Thanks to the Clean Games, the people change their attitudes and thinking about the environment and environmental issues, and everything is done in a playful and entertaining manner.

The logic of contribution analysis is to look at the situation through the eyes of a project participant and to visualize the change in their attitude through their narrative. Based on the data available, it is hard to say that the project organizers in the field are actually aware of its social impact. Therefore, in the absence of an observable positive effect in attitudes, it makes no sense trying to identify its causes.

Thus, despite the limited quantity and quality of data, the findings are sufficient to say that the results obtained are not fully consistent with the stated social impact goals of the project.

THE PROSPECTS OF USING THE CONTRIBUTION ANALYSIS METHOD IN THE CLEAN GAMES CASE

What can be done to improve the assessment of the social impact of a project by means of the contribution analysis method?

According to the most significant changes methodology (Davies & Dart, 2005), for the case in question, the research design might look as follows:

1. Conceptualizing "the public awareness and engagement in the environmental agenda" as the object of change.

2. Developing a qualitative survey guide for organizers and participants to explore perceptions of the subject of change and the respondent's role in that change.

The proposed use of contribution analysis involves more than just a qualitative assessment of its results, but requires designing a participatory action research, which in itself is a tool for positive social change.

3. Defining the reporting period during which the change is expected to be achieved.

4. Non-anonymous interviews about the experience of participation in the project are collected at least at two points — before and after participating in the project. In them, the participants pronounce their perception of the subject of change, and the researcher tries to fix the changes in this perception that occurred during the project.

5. Selection of the most significant stories — those in which the positive changes in the project were the greatest, and which would serve as an expression of general trends.

6. Feedback from the participants to clarify the story details.

7. Content analysis of the interview materials based on the codes obtained from the stories. The most meaningful stories are expected to change the understanding of the project itself and lead to the formulation of new concepts that are used to interpret the participants' experiences.

8. Making organizational changes to the project based on the study findings.

The proposed use of contribution analysis involves more than just a qualitative assessment of its results, but requires designing a participatory action research, which in itself is a tool for positive social change. It allows both the project organizers and its participants to have a better understanding of their own goals and ideas about the social project.