Introduction to Evaluation #1

 What is evaluation?

When beginning an evaluation, program people will often want the answer to this question:

·      Does the program work? And how can it be improved?

However, there are many equally important questions

·      Is the program worthwhile?

·      Are there alternatives that would be better?

·      Are there unintended consequences?

·      Are the program goals appropriate and useful?

Program evaluation is “…the systematic assessment of the operation and/or outcomes of a program or policy, compared to a set of explicit or implicit standards as a means of contributing to the improvement of the program or policy…”

The systematic assessment

An evaluation is a systematic assessment. Evaluations should follow a systematic and mutually agreed on plan. Plans will typically include the following:

·      Determining the goal of the evaluation: What is the evaluation question; what is the evaluation to find out?

·      How will the evaluation answer the question: What methods will be used?

·      Making the results useful, how will the results be reported so that they can be used by the organization to make improvements?

The first part of the evaluation is to determine the question.

“Assessment of the operation and/or outcomes of a program or policy”

Evaluations can generally answer two types of questions:

1. What is the outcome of the program? Did the program have any impact? Was there any improvement in people's lives?

2. How did the program get to that outcome? Did the program have some set of procedures? Were these procedures followed, were the procedures reasonable, was there a better way to get to the outcomes?