Listening to Underrepresented Communities: What Changes?

A funder can receive a polished project plan and still not know whether it reflects the people whose trust and participation will determine whether the project succeeds. When teams mainly hear from those who are easiest to reach, they may mistake a partial view for reliable evidence. Listening to underrepresented communities matters, but gathering more views is not enough. The evidence is useful only when it changes assumptions, decisions or measures of success. This article explains how project teams can document that change and how funders can assess whether listening has been meaningful.

Why does listening to underrepresented communities matter?

Underrepresented communities are groups whose experiences are missing, or too lightly represented, in the evidence used to make decisions. The term is not a fixed label for particular people. It describes a gap between whose lives are affected by a project and whose views are present when that project is designed or assessed.

That gap is explicit in UK Research and Innovation's September 2026 consortium call. The call seeks new ways to measure public trust and confidence in policing. UKRI says conventional data collection can miss less-heard groups, including children, victims and survivors of abuse, and people involved in the justice system. Applicants must include documented co-design, meaning that members of target communities help shape the tools or approaches before they are used. They must also identify the specific design decisions this involvement will inform.

This requirement matters beyond one funding call. Listening-led engagement means spending most of the communication effort hearing from communities before deciding what to do. It is not simply collecting more comments. In practice, it asks a team to show a clear line from what people said to what the team reconsidered, changed, tested or chose not to pursue. For project teams, this means documenting how community evidence affected the work. For funders, it means looking beyond participation numbers to examine whether listening influenced actual decisions.

Across collaborative research and innovation funding, teams are increasingly expected to demonstrate not only strong partnerships but also credible evidence that their proposed solution responds to the people expected to use or experience it.

What changes when communities shape the research?

A Wisconsin Center for Education Research article describes two classroom-based studies conducted in 2023 and 2024. Both used participatory action research, a collaborative method in which community members help shape the research rather than only supplying information to researchers.

In the first study, refugee resettlement caseworkers helped develop the research question about access to higher education. Their contributions helped the team identify barriers and strategies, then use the findings to develop recommendations on resettlement services, mentoring and academic support. The important change was not simply that refugee voices appeared in the findings. Community knowledge influenced the question, the interpretation and the recommendations.

In the second study, Palestinian partners helped design the interview questions used to document experiences of occupation, displacement and resettlement. They also decided not to publish written narratives because of safety concerns, choosing instead to share testimony at a campus event. That decision shows why listening must continue beyond data collection: the people involved helped determine how their experiences were used and what responsible communication looked like.

How can teams turn wider listening into decisions?

The 80:20 Pathway approach to listening is a practical principle: listen roughly 80% of the time and talk 20%. The ratio is a prompt to create space for community knowledge before a team explains its solution. It works best alongside wider community engagement practice, where communication goes both ways and people can influence the work.

Timing matters. Listening that happens only after the solution, budget and delivery model have been settled may improve implementation, but it has limited power to challenge the project’s underlying assumptions.

One way to apply The 80:20 Pathway approach is to create a simple evidence-to-decision record:

• Define whose views may be missing. Compare the people affected by the project with the people already represented in interviews, workshops, surveys or advisory groups. Treat this as a question to investigate, not a list based on assumptions.
• Remove practical barriers to participation. Ask community partners about timing, location, language, format, accessibility, payment and safety. Different routes may be needed because a single workshop or online survey may not suit everyone.
• Ask questions that can alter the work. Instead of asking whether people like a prepared solution, ask what trust looks like to them, what concerns would stop participation and what they would change first. Be clear about which decisions are still open.
• Record the decision trail. For each important finding, note where the evidence came from, what the team learnt, which assumption it challenged and what happened next, while protecting participants’ confidentiality where necessary. If the team decides not to act on a suggestion, record the reason and explain it to participants.
• Review measures of success together. A project may initially focus on reach or technical performance while communities care about safety, usefulness, fairness or whether feedback receives a response. Agreeing measures together can reveal whether the project is building the conditions for trust and adoption.

This record gives funders and project leads something more useful than a claim that engagement happened. It shows what evidence entered the project, how it was weighed and where it affected design, delivery or evaluation. It can also expose a difficult truth early: sometimes the evidence suggests that a planned activity needs substantial revision.

Frequently asked questions

How do you identify an underrepresented community?

Start with the decision you need to make and ask whose experience is relevant but absent from the current evidence. Use local organisations and community contacts to test your assumptions. Representation is specific to the issue and place, so avoid treating one person as the voice of a whole community.

Does listening mean acting on every suggestion?

No. Teams still have legal, ethical, financial and technical constraints. Meaningful listening requires a transparent response: explain what changed, what did not change and why. That response helps participants see how their contribution was considered.

How can a funder assess whether listening was meaningful?

Ask for the decision trail, not only the number of activities or participants. A useful account identifies whose views were sought, how barriers were addressed, what evidence emerged and which assumptions, design choices or success measures changed as a result.

What is the one takeaway?

Listening becomes valuable when evidence from underrepresented communities changes what a project does and how it judges success.

For consultancy support with designing listening-led engagement, contact The 80:20 Pathway. We can also discuss whether training would help your team apply the approach.