The purpose of this Human Trafficking Action Toolkit is to provide information, strategies, tools, and other resources that will assist organizations and programs in collecting and interpreting data that will improve their work.
The U.S. Justice Department’s Office for Victims of Crime Training & Technical Assistance Center developed this toolkit to benefit grantees under the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) human trafficking program; however, any victims service program that want to conduct action research can benefit from the information and resources provided in this toolkit. The toolkit defines action research, explains why action research is important, and provides a detailed overview of the action research implementation process as composed of these five components: 1) Choice of a focus and partners; 2) Gaining knowledge through data collection; 3) Leveraging data to develop an action plan; 4) Implementing the action plan; and 5) Monitoring and reporting on the operation of the action plan. Each component has an overview of component activities in the action research process; potential challenges and solutions in this component of the action research process; some examples of how the component has been performed in action research projects; and tools, templates, checklists, and other resources to help conduct action research.