Introduction to Evaluation . Developing an Evaluation Plan ? Why should you have an evaluation plan? After many late nights of hard work, more planning meetings than you care to remember, and many pots of coffee, your initiative has finally gotten off the ground. You have every reason to be proud of yourself and you should probably take a bit of a breather to avoid burnout. Don't rest on your laurels too long, though- -your next step is to monitor the initiative's progress. If your initiative is working perfectly in every way, you deserve the satisfaction of knowing that. If adjustments need to be made to guarantee your success, you want to know about them so you can jump right in there and keep your hard work from going to waste. And, in the worst case scenario, you'll want to know if it's an utter failure so you can figure out the best way to cut your losses. For these reasons, evaluation is extremely important. There's so much information on evaluation out there that it's easy for community groups to fall into the trap of just buying an evaluation handbook and following it to the letter. This might seem like the best way to go about it at first glance- - evaluation is a huge topic and it can be pretty intimidating. Health Care Program Evaluation. RAND excels at evaluating performance of health care programs that operate in diverse settings, identifying opportunities for improvement. Health Program Planning and Evaluation L. Michele Issel, PhD, RN Clinical Professor School of Public Health. SECTION V Outcome and Impact Evaluation of Health Programs 363 12 Planning the Intervention Effect Evaluations 365. Unfortunately, if you resort to the . Your evaluation system should address simple questions that are important to your community, your staff, and (last but never least!) your funding partners. Try to think about financial and practical considerations when asking yourself what sort of questions you want answered. Matching Objectives with Evaluation Methods - National Cancer Institute. Program Planning Models. Send inquiries about DOH and its programs to the Health Consumer Assistance Office. Six Steps to Program Planning and Evaluation Program planning. University of Washington School of Public Health Department of Health Services. Shine a spotlight on the benefits of promoting health in the workplace. Workplace Health Promotion Programs focuses on the incredible value that employee health programs can offer by exploring six key topics: behavioral health. The best way to insure that you have the most productive evaluation possible is to come up with an evaluation plan. Here are a few reasons why you should develop an evaluation plan: It guides you through each step of the process of evaluation. It helps you decide what sort of information you and your stakeholders really need. It keeps you from wasting time gathering information that isn't needed. It helps you identify the best possible methods and strategies for getting the needed information. It helps you come up with a reasonable and realistic timeline for evaluation. Most importantly, it will help you improve your initiative! When should you develop an evaluation plan? As soon as possible! The best time to do this is before you implement the initiative. After that, you can do it anytime, but the earlier you develop it and begin to implement it, the better off your initiative will be, and the greater the outcomes will be at the end. Remember, evaluation is more than just finding out if you did your job. It is important to use evaluation data to improve the initiative along the way. What are the different types of stakeholders and what are their interests in your evaluation? We'd all like to think that everyone is as interested in our initiative or project as we are, but unfortunately that isn't the case. For community health groups, there are basically three groups of people who might be identified as stakeholders (those who are interested, involved, and invested in the project or initiative in some way): community groups, grantmakers/funders, and university- based researchers. Take some time to make a list of your project or initiative's stakeholders, as well as which category they fall into. What are the types of stakeholders? Community groups: Hey, that's you! Perhaps this is the most obvious category of stakeholders, because it includes the staff and/or volunteers involved in your initiative or project. It also includes the people directly affected by it- -your targets and agents of change. Grantmakers and funders: Don't forget the folks that pay the bills! Most grantmakers and funders want to know how their money's being spent, so you'll find that they often have specific requirements about things they want you to evaluate. Step 5: Planning for Conclusions. 30 Step 6: Planning for Dissemination and Sharing of Lessons Learned. CDC Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health. 5 Figure 2: Sample Logic Model. About ACPHD>Our Organization>Community Assessment, Planning, and Evaluation (CAPE. Community Assessment, Planning, and Evaluation. Check out all your current funders to see what kind of information they want you to be gathering. Better yet, find out what sort of information you'll need to have for any future grants you're considering applying for. It can't hurt! University- based researchers: This includes researchers and evaluators that your coalition or initiative may choose to bring in as consultants or full partners. Such researchers might be specialists in public health promotion, epidemiologists, behavioral scientists, specialists in evaluation, or some other academic field. Of course, not all community groups will work with university- based researchers on their projects, but if you choose to do so, they should have their own concerns, ideas, and questions for the evaluation. If you can't quite understand why you'd include these folks in your evaluation process, try thinking of them as auto mechanics- -if you want them to help you make your car run better, you will of course include them in the diagnostic process. If you went to a mechanic and started ordering him around about how to fix your car without letting him check it out first, he'd probably get pretty annoyed with you. Same thing with your researchers and evaluators: it's important to include them in the evaluation development process if you really want them to help improve your initiative. Each type of stakeholder will have a different perspective on your organization as well as what they want to learn from the evaluation. Every group is unique, and you may find that there are other sorts of stakeholders to consider with your own organization. Take some time to brainstorm about who your stakeholders are before you being making your evaluation plan. What do they want to know about the evaluation? While some information from the evaluation will be of use to all three groups of stakeholders, some will be needed by only one or two of the groups. Grantmakers and funders, for example, will usually want to know how many people were reached and served by the initiative, as well as whether the initiative had the community - level impact it intended to have. Community groups may want to use evaluation results to guide them in decisions about their programs, and where they are putting their efforts. University- based researchers will most likely be interested in proving whether any improvements in community health were definitely caused by your programs or initiatives; they may also want to study the overall structure of your group or initiative to identify the conditions under which success may be reached. What decisions do they need to make, and how would they use the data to inform those decisions? You and your stakeholders will probably be making decisions that affect your program or initiative based on the results of your evaluation, so you need to consider what those decisions will be. Your evaluation should yield honest and accurate information for you and your stakeholders; you'll need to be careful not to structure it in such a way that it exaggerates your success, and you'll need to be really careful not to structure it in such a way that it downplays your success! Consider what sort of decisions you and your stakeholders will be making. Community groups will probably want to use the evaluation results to help them find ways to modify and improve your program or initiative. Grantmakers and funders will most likely be making decisions about how much funding to give you in the future, or even whether to continue funding your program at all (or any related programs). They may also think about whether to impose any requirements on you to get that program (e. University- based researchers will need to decide how they can best assist with plan development and data reporting. You'll also want to consider how you and your stakeholders plan to balance costs and benefits. Evaluation should take up about 1. That may sound like a lot, but remember that evaluation is an essential tool for improving your initiative. When considering how to balance costs and benefits, ask yourself the following questions: What do you need to know? What is required by the community? What is required by funding? How do you develop an evaluation plan? There are four main steps to developing an evaluation plan: Clarifying program objectives and goals. Developing evaluation questions. Developing evaluation methods. Setting up a timeline for evaluation activities. Clarifying program objectives and goals. The first step is to clarify the objectives and goals of your initiative. What are the main things you want to accomplish, and how have you set out to accomplish them? Clarifying these will help you identify which major program components should be evaluated. One way to do this is to make a table of program components and elements. Developing evaluation questions. For our purposes, there are four main categories of evaluation questions. Let's look at some examples of possible questions and suggested methods to answer those questions. Later on, we'll tell you a bit more about what these methods are and how they work. Planning and implementation issues: How well was the program or initiative planned out, and how well was that plan put into practice? Is there diversity among participants? Why do participants enter and leave your programs? Are there a variety of services and alternative activities generated? Do those most in need of help receive services? Are community members satisfied that the program meets local needs? Possible methods to answer those questions: monitoring system that tracks actions and accomplishments related to bringing about the mission of the initiative, member survey of satisfaction with goals, member survey of satisfaction with outcomes. Assessing attainment of objectives: How well has the program or initiative met its stated objectives? How many hours are participants involved? Possible methods to answer those questions: monitoring system (see above), member survey of satisfaction with outcomes, goal attainment scaling. Impact on participants: How much and what kind of a difference has the program or initiative made for its targets of change? Are participants satisfied with the experience?
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