One Collective Elgin is dedicated to gaining a deeper understanding of the community. Our vision is for every person in Elgin to have their voice heard, access the resources they need, and contribute meaningfully to the community. To support this vision, we began by actively listening to community members. The following report highlights what we learned.
The Assessment Setup
We asked each participant three questions:
What are the top three to five biggest challenges in your community or in the city of Elgin? Which one would you address first?
What skills, resources, or strengths do you have that you would be willing to share to help solve problems in our community?
Where are you and others in your community finding hope right now?
Demographics
At the end of the interview, we invited participants to share their demographic information if they felt comfortable doing so. Sharing this information was completely voluntary.
Coding Responses
We organized the responses using a coding system with two levels: parent codes and child codes.
Broad themes were grouped into parent codes, and more detailed or specific answers within those themes were grouped into child codes.
For question one, responses were placed into two main parent categories:
Validate: these were concerns that had already been identified in past Elgin needs assessments and are currently being worked on.
Elevate: these were newer concerns that had not appeared in previous assessments and they may need additional attention moving forward
Results
Limitations
This project was led by community volunteers, not professional researchers or scientists.
Participants were not randomly selected. Instead we used a snowball method, which means interviewers invited people they knew to participate in those participants then recommended others.
As a result of this method, the findings cannot be assumed to reflect the views of everyone in Elgin.
Three members of the One Collective team reviewed and coded the responses. While we made every effort to approach the data to thoroughly and fairly, we recognized that personal perspectives and experiences can influence how information is interpreted and organized.