Approaches to Gathering and Validating Data in Social Responsibility Assessments
Conservation International, partnering with organizations of the Conservation Alliance and the Coalition for Social Responsibility, co-developed the Social Responsibility Assessment Tool for the Seafood Sector (SRA).
This tool is built on the Monterey Framework, the UN FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries, and other relevant existing protocols and frameworks.
It is designed to be a diagnostic or rapid assessment tool to:
Assess risk of social issues
Identify areas for improvement
Inform the development of a Fishery Improvement Project
Social responsibility assessments, when done well, can produce sound information upon which relevant stakeholders in the seafood supply chain can base decisions and actions to find sustainable solutions to complex social issues.
Results from social responsibility assessments provide direction on how the organization can move, not only towards conformance to the standards, but also to ensure that systems are in place for continuous performance improvement.
Social assessments also inform companies of their impact on their supply chain—in the communities and countries that they operate in—allowing them to take measures to mitigate or eliminate negative outcomes, and develop initiatives where maximum positive difference can be made.
The importance of reliable, verifiable, accurate information in social responsibility assessments cannot be overstated.
These 4 modules introduce users to the Key Foundation Elements in the approach for gathering and validating data that align with the key objectives of social responsibility assessments.
Understand the Standards
Assessors need to have a clear understanding of the principles, standards, and requirements that they will be assessing against.
In Module 1: Labor and Human Rights Standards, Issues, and Risks in the Seafood Supply Chain, you will find an introductory course to the principles, components, and performance indicators of the Monterey Framework.
Systems Approach and Triangulation
Social responsibility assessments go beyond the checklist approach. These assessments do not only determine whether policies and procedures exist, but include checking the effectiveness of these policies and procedures that were developed by fisheries and farms, in order to screen out violations to the standards that they had made a commitment to upholding. A good social responsibility assessment also gathers and triangulates a wide range of information.
In Module 2: Effective Data Gathering and Validation in Social Responsibility Assessments, you will learn the systems approach to gathering and validating data in social responsibility assessments.
Key Informant Interviews
The depth and representativeness of the information collected from workers and other critical stakeholders determine the quality of the assessment findings and sets a program apart from the rest.
Module 3: Conducting Key Informant Interviews provides the basic knowledge necessary for conducting interviews with management and workers.
Root Cause Analysis
A key objective of social responsibility assessments is to provide information for stakeholders to find solutions to the right problems and address the root causes of problems.
Module 4: Root Cause Analysis provides a high-level overview of how the process of determining root causes aids assessors in establishing the context and the whys of the issues. Module 4 also provides insight in assessing whether solutions address the problems at the core and prevent recurrence of these events.
