Chapter 2. Are You Ready?

Analyze and Interpret Data

Once you’ve collected data regarding the level of oral health integration at your institution and the degree of faculty knowledge and openness toward interprofessional collaboration, you’ll need to interpret your findings.

Again, the depth of your analysis will hinge on the degree of change you aim to implement and the resources you have at your disposal.

Faculty champions. Those who have access to survey data and want to integrate interprofessional oral health content into individual courses can use that data to determine appropriate changes on a course-by-course basis. Data can also be used by individual faculty to advocate for broader change. Faculty who do not have access to survey data can evaluate individual syllabi for targeted courses to determine areas where oral health content could be integrated and make changes accordingly.

Program pioneers. For broader assessments, data analysis will be a collaborative effort that might involve a combination of faculty champions and graduate students or volunteers who can review findings and identify programming needs.

Systems-wide change agents. Institution-wide assessments will require an interprofessional team of faculty to collate and review results and apply them to programming needs across the professions.