A Brief Introduction ...

Note that the concept of program evaluation can include a wide variety of methods
to evaluate many aspects of programs in nonprofit or for-profit organizations. There
are numerous books and other materials that provide in-depth analysis of
evaluations, their designs, methods, combination of methods and techniques of
analysis. However, personnel do not have to be experts in these topics to carry out a
useful program evaluation. The "20-80" rule applies here, that 20% of effort
generates 80% of the needed results. It's better to do what might turn out to be an
average effort at evaluation than to do no evaluation at all. (Besides, if you resort to
bringing in an evaluation consultant, you should be a smart consumer. Far too many
program evaluations generate information that is either impractical or irrelevant -- if
the information is understood at all.) This document orients personnel to the nature
of program evaluation and how it can be carried out in a realistic and practical
fashion.

Note that much of the information in this section was gleaned from various works of
Michael Quinn Patton.

Program Evaluation
Some Myths About Program Evaluation

1.. Many people believe evaluation is a useless activity that generates lots of boring
data with useless conclusions. This was a problem with evaluations in the past when
program evaluation methods were chosen largely on the basis of achieving complete
scientific accuracy, reliability and validity. This approach often generated extensive
data from which very carefully chosen conclusions were drawn. Generalizations and
recommendations were avoided. As a result, evaluation reports tended to reiterate
the obvious and left program administrators disappointed and skeptical about the
value of evaluation in general. More recently (especially as a result of Michael
Patton's development of utilization-focused evaluation), evaluation has focused on
utility, relevance and practicality at least as much as scientific validity.

2. Many people believe that evaluation is about proving the success or failure of a
program. This myth assumes that success is implementing the perfect program and
never having to hear from employees, customers or clients again -- the program will
now run itself perfectly. This doesn't happen in real life. Success is remaining open to
continuing feedback and adjusting the program accordingly. Evaluation gives you this
continuing feedback.

3. Many believe that evaluation is a highly unique and complex process that occurs
at a certain time in a certain way, and almost always includes the use of outside
experts. Many people believe they must completely understand terms such as
validity and reliability. They don't have to. They do have to consider what information
they need in order to make current decisions about program issues or needs. And
they have to be willing to commit to understanding what is really going on. Note that
many people regularly undertake some nature of program evaluation -- they just
don't do it in a formal fashion so they don't get the most out of their efforts or they
make conclusions that are inaccurate (some evaluators would disagree that this is
program evaluation if not done methodically). Consequently, they miss precious
opportunities to make more of difference for their customer and clients, or to get a
bigger bang for their buck.

So What is Program Evaluation?

First, we'll consider "what is a program?" Typically, organizations work from their
mission to identify several overall goals which must be reached to accomplish their
mission. In nonprofits, each of these goals often becomes a program. Nonprofit
programs are organized methods to provide certain related services to constituents,
e.g., clients, customers, patients, etc. Programs must be evaluated to decide if the
programs are indeed useful to constituents. In a for-profit, a program is often a one-
time effort to produce a new product or line of products.

So, still, what is program evaluation? Program evaluation is carefully collecting

information about a program or some aspect of a program in order to make
necessary decisions about the program. Program evaluation can include any or a
variety of at least 35 different types of evaluation, such as for needs assessments,
accreditation, cost/benefit analysis, effectiveness, efficiency, formative, summative,
goal-based, process, outcomes, etc. The type of evaluation you undertake to improve
your programs depends on what you want to learn about the program. Don't worry
about what type of evaluation you need or are doing -- worry about what you need to
know to make the program decisions you need to make, and worry about how you
can accurately collect and understand that information.

Where Program Evaluation is Helpful

Frequent Reasons:Program evaluation can:
1. Understand, verify or increase the impact of products or services
on customers or clients - These "outcomes" evaluations are
increasingly required by nonprofit funders as verification that the
nonprofits are indeed helping their constituents. Too often, service
providers (for-profit or nonprofit) rely on their own instincts and
passions to conclude what their customers or clients really need and
whether the products or services are providing what is needed. Over
time, these organizations find themselves in a lot of guessing about
what would be a good product or service, and trial and error about
how new products or services could be delivered.
2. Improve delivery mechanisms to be more efficient and less costly -
Over time, product or service delivery ends up to be an inefficient
collection of activities that are less efficient and more costly than
need be. Evaluations can identify program strengths and weaknesses
to improve the program.
3. Verify that you're doing what you think you're doing - Typically,
plans about how to deliver services, end up changing substantially as
those plans are put into place. Evaluations can verify if the program
is really running as originally planned.

Other Reasons:

Program evaluation can:

4. Facilitate management's really thinking about what their program is all about,
including its goals, how it meets it goals and how it will know if it has met its goals or
not.
5. Produce data or verify results that can be used for public relations and promoting
services in the community.
6. Produce valid comparisons between programs to decide which should be retained,
e.g., in the face of pending budget cuts.
7. Fully examine and describe effective programs for duplication elsewhere.

Basic Ingredients: Organization and Program(s)

You Need An Organization:

This may seem too obvious to discuss, but before an organization embarks on
evaluating a program, it should have well established means to conduct itself as an
organization, e.g., (in the case of a nonprofit) the board should be in good working
order, the organization should be staffed and organized to conduct activities to work
toward the mission of the organization, and there should be no current crisis that is
clearly more important to address than evaluating programs.

You Need Program(s):

To effectively conduct program evaluation, you should first have programs. That is,
you need a strong impression of what your customers or clients actually need. (You
may have used a needs assessment to determine these needs -- itself a form of
evaluation, but usually the first step in a good marketing plan). Next, you need some
effective methods to meet each of those goals. These methods are usually in the
form of programs.

It often helps to think of your programs in terms of inputs, process, outputs and
outcomes. Inputs are the various resources needed to run the program, e.g., money,
facilities, customers, clients, program staff, etc. The process is how the program is
carried out, e.g., customers are served, clients are counseled, children are cared for,
art is created, association members are supported, etc. The outputs are the units of
service, e.g., number of customers serviced, number of clients counseled, children
cared for, artistic pieces produced, or members in the association. Outcomes are the
impacts on the customers or on clients receiving services, e.g., increased mental
health, safe and secure development, richer artistic appreciation and perspectives in
life, increased effectiveness among members, etc.

Planning Your Program Evaluation

Depends on What Information You Need to Make Your Decisions
and On Your Resources.

Often, management wants to know everything about their products, services or

programs. However, limited resources usually force managers to prioritize what they
need to know to make current decisions.

Your program evaluation plans depend on what information you need to collect in
order to make major decisions. Usually, management is faced with having to make
major decisions due to decreased funding, ongoing complaints, unmet needs among
customers and clients, the need to polish service delivery, etc. For example, do you
want to know more about what is actually going on in your programs, whether your
programs are meeting their goals, the impact of your programs on customers, etc?
You may want other information or a combination of these. Ultimately, it's up to you.

But the more focused you are about what you want to examine by the evaluation, the
more efficient you can be in your evaluation, the shorter the time it will take you and
ultimately the less it will cost you (whether in your own time, the time of your
employees and/or the time of a consultant).

There are trade offs, too, in the breadth and depth of information you get. The more
breadth you want, usually the less depth you get (unless you have a great deal of
resources to carry out the evaluation). On the other hand, if you want to examine a
certain aspect of a program in great detail, you will likely not get as much
information about other aspects of the program.

For those starting out in program evaluation or who have very limited resources, they
can use various methods to get a good mix of breadth and depth of information. They
can both understand more about certain areas of their programs and not go bankrupt
doing so.

Key Considerations:

Consider the following key questions when designing a program evaluation.

1. For what purposes is the evaluation being done, i.e., what do you want to be able
to decide as a result of the evaluation?
2. Who are the audiences for the information from the evaluation, e.g., customers,
bankers, funders, board, management, staff, customers, clients, etc.
3. What kinds of information are needed to make the decision you need to make
and/or enlighten your intended audiences, e.g., information to really understand the
process of the product or program (its inputs, activities and outputs), the customers
or clients who experience the product or program, strengths and weaknesses of the
product or program, benefits to customers or clients (outcomes), how the product or
program failed and why, etc.
4. From what sources should the information be collected, e.g., employees,
customers, clients, groups of customers or clients and employees together, program
documentation, etc.
5. How can that information be collected in a reasonable fashion, e.g.,
questionnaires, interviews, examining documentation, observing customers or
employees, conducting focus groups among customers or employees, etc.
6. When is the information needed (so, by when must it be collected)?
7. What resources are available to collect the information?

Some Major Types of Program Evaluation

When designing your evaluation approach, it may be helpful to review the following
three types of evaluations, which are rather common in organizations. Note that you
should not design your evaluation approach simply by choosing which of the
following three types you will use -- you should design your evaluation approach by
carefully addressing the above key considerations.

Goals-Based Evaluation
Often programs are established to meet one or more specific goals. These goals are
often described in the original program plans.

Goal-based evaluations are evaluating the extent to which programs are meeting
predetermined goals or objectives. Questions to ask yourself when designing an
evaluation to see if you reached your goals, are:
1. How were the program goals (and objectives, is applicable) established? Was the
process effective?
2. What is the status of the program's progress toward achieving the goals?
3. Will the goals be achieved according to the timelines specified in the program
implementation or operations plan? If not, then why?
4. Do personnel have adequate resources (money, equipment, facilities, training,
etc.) to achieve the goals?
5. How should priorities be changed to put more focus on achieving the goals?
(Depending on the context, this question might be viewed as a program
management decision, more than an evaluation question.)
6. How should timelines be changed (be careful about making these changes - know
why efforts are behind schedule before timelines are changed)?
7. How should goals be changed (be careful about making these changes - know why
efforts are not achieving the goals before changing the goals)? Should any goals be
added or removed? Why?
8. How should goals be established in the future?

Process-Based Evaluations

Process-based evaluations are geared to fully understanding how a program works --

how does it produce that results that it does. These evaluations are useful if
programs are long-standing and have changed over the years, employees or
customers report a large number of complaints about the program, there appear to
be large inefficiencies in delivering program services and they are also useful for
accurately portraying to outside parties how a program truly operates (e.g., for
replication elsewhere).

There are numerous questions that might be addressed in a process evaluation.

These questions can be selected by carefully considering what is important to know
about the program. Examples of questions to ask yourself when designing an
evaluation to understand and/or closely examine the processes in your programs,
are:
1. On what basis do employees and/or the customers decide that products or
services are needed?
2. What is required of employees in order to deliver the product or services?
3. How are employees trained about how to deliver the product or services?
4. How do customers or clients come into the program?
5. What is required of customers or client?
6. How do employees select which products or services will be provided to the
customer or client?
7. What is the general process that customers or clients go through with the product
or program?
8. What do customers or clients consider to be strengths of the program?
9. What do staff consider to be strengths of the product or program?
10. What typical complaints are heard from employees and/or customers?
11. What do employees and/or customers recommend to improve the product or
program?
12. On what basis do employees and/or the customer decide that the product or
services are no longer needed?

Outcomes-Based Evaluation

Program evaluation with an outcomes focus is increasingly important for nonprofits

and asked for by funders.An outcomes-based evaluation facilitates your asking if your
organization is really doing the right program activities to bring about the outcomes
you believe (or better yet, you've verified) to be needed by your clients (rather than
just engaging in busy activities which seem reasonable to do at the time). Outcomes
are benefits to clients from participation in the program. Outcomes are usually in
terms of enhanced learning (knowledge, perceptions/attitudes or skills) or conditions,
e.g., increased literacy, self-reliance, etc. Outcomes are often confused with program
outputs or units of services, e.g., the number of clients who went through a program.

The United Way of America (http://www.unitedway.org/outcomes/) provides an

excellent overview of outcomes-based evaluation, including introduction to outcomes
measurement, a program outcome model, why to measure outcomes, use of
program outcome findings by agencies, eight steps to success for measuring
outcomes, examples of outcomes and outcome indicators for various programs and
the resources needed for measuring outcomes. The following information is a top-
level summary of information from this site.

To accomplish an outcomes-based evaluation, you should first pilot, or test, this

evaluation approach on one or two programs at most (before doing all programs).

The general steps to accomplish an outcomes-based evaluation include to:

1. Identify the major outcomes that you want to examine or verify for the program
under evaluation. You might reflect on your mission (the overall purpose of your
organization) and ask yourself what impacts you will have on your clients as you work
towards your mission. For example, if your overall mission is to provide shelter and
resources to abused women, then ask yourself what benefits this will have on those
women if you effectively provide them shelter and other services or resources. As a
last resort, you might ask yourself, "What major activities are we doing now?" and
then for each activity, ask "Why are we doing that?" The answer to this "Why?"
question is usually an outcome. This "last resort" approach, though, may just end up
justifying ineffective activities you are doing now, rather than examining what you
should be doing in the first place.
2. Choose the outcomes that you want to examine, prioritize the outcomes and, if
your time and resources are limited, pick the top two to four most important
outcomes to examine for now.
3. For each outcome, specify what observable measures, or indicators, will suggest
that you're achieving that key outcome with your clients. This is often the most
important and enlightening step in outcomes-based evaluation. However, it is often
the most challenging and even confusing step, too, because you're suddenly going
from a rather intangible concept, e.g., increased self-reliance, to specific activities,
e.g., supporting clients to get themselves to and from work, staying off drugs and
alcohol, etc. It helps to have a "devil's advocate" during this phase of identifying
indicators, i.e., someone who can question why you can assume that an outcome was
reached because certain associated indicators were present.
4. Specify a "target" goal of clients, i.e., what number or percent of clients you
commit to achieving specific outcomes with, e.g., "increased self-reliance (an
outcome) for 70% of adult, African American women living in the inner city of
Minneapolis as evidenced by the following measures (indicators) ..."
5. Identify what information is needed to show these indicators, e.g., you'll need to
know how many clients in the target group went through the program, how many of
them reliably undertook their own transportation to work and stayed off drugs, etc. If
your program is new, you may need to evaluate the process in the program to verify
that the program is indeed carried out according to your original plans. (Michael
Patton, prominent researcher, writer and consultant in evaluation, suggests that the
most important type of evaluation to carry out may be this implementation
evaluation to verify that your program ended up to be implemented as you originally
planned.)
6. Decide how can that information be efficiently and realistically gathered
(see Selecting Which Methods to Use below). Consider program documentation,
observation of program personnel and clients in the program, questionnaires and
interviews about clients perceived benefits from the program, case studies of
program failures and successes, etc. You may not need all of the above. (see
Overview of Methods to Collect Information below).
7. Analyze and report the findings (see Analyzing and Interpreting
Information below).

Overview of Methods to Collect Information

The following table provides an overview of the major methods used for collecting
data during evaluations.
Method Overall Purpose Advantages Challenges
-can complete
anonymously
-inexpensive to -might not get careful
administer feedback
when need to quickly
-easy to compare and -wording can bias
questionnaires, and/or easily get lots
analyze client's responses
surveys, of information from
-administer to many -are impersonal
checklists people in a non
people -in surveys, may need
threatening way
-can get lots of data sampling expert
-many sample - doesn't get full story
questionnaires already
exist
when want to fully
-get full range and -can take much time
understand someone's
depth of information -can be hard to analyze
impressions or
-develops relationship and compare
interviews experiences, or learn
with client -can be costly
more about their
-can be flexible with -interviewer can bias
answers to
client client's responses
questionnaires
-get comprehensive and
when want impression
historical information -often takes much time
of how program
-doesn't interrupt -info may be incomplete
operates without
program or client's -need to be quite clear
documentation interrupting the
routine in program about what looking for
review program; is from
-information already -not flexible means to
review of applications,
exists get data; data restricted
finances, memos,
-few biases about to what already exists
minutes, etc.
information
 -can be difficult to
interpret seen
to gather accurate -view operations of a behaviors
information about how program as they are -can be complex to
observation a program actually actually occurring categorize observations
operates, particularly -can adapt to events as -can influence
about processes they occur behaviors of program
participants
-can be expensive
explore a topic in
depth through group -quickly and reliably get
discussion, e.g., about common impressions
-can be hard to analyze
reactions to an -can be efficient way to
responses
experience or get much range and
-need good facilitator
focus groups suggestion, depth of information in
for safety and closure
understanding short time
-difficult to schedule 6-8
common complaints, - can convey key
people together
etc.; useful in information about
evaluation and programs
marketing
to fully understand or
-fully depicts client's
depict client's -usually quite time
experience in program
experiences in a consuming to collect,
input, process and
program, and conduct organize and describe
case studies results
comprehensive -represents depth of
-powerful means to
examination through information, rather than
portray program to
cross comparison of breadth
outsiders
cases

Also see:
Appreciative Inquiry
Survey Design

Ethics: Informed Consent from Program Participants

Note that if you plan to include in your evaluation, the focus and reporting on
personal information about customers or clients participating in the evaluation, then
you should first gain their consent to do so. They should understand what you're
doing with them in the evaluation and how any information associated with them will
be reported. You should clearly convey terms of confidentiality regarding access to
evaluation results. They should have the right to participate or not. Have participants
review and sign an informed consent form. See the sample informed-consent form.

How to Apply Certain Methods

Purposes and Formats of Questions Developing Questionnaires

Conducting Interviews
Conducting Focus Groups
Developing Case Studies

Selecting Which Methods to Use

Overall Goal in Selecting Methods:

The overall goal in selecting evaluation method(s) is to get the most useful
information to key decision makers in the most cost-effective and realistic fashion.
Consider the following questions:
1. What information is needed to make current decisions about a product or
program?
2. Of this information, how much can be collected and analyzed in a low-cost and
practical manner, e.g., using questionnaires, surveys and checklists?
3. How accurate will the information be (reference the above table for disadvantages
of methods)?
4. Will the methods get all of the needed information?
5. What additional methods should and could be used if additional information is
needed?
6. Will the information appear as credible to decision makers, e.g., to funders or top
management?
7. Will the nature of the audience conform to the methods, e.g., will they fill out
questionnaires carefully, engage in interviews or focus groups, let you examine their
documentations, etc.?
8. Who can administer the methods now or is training required?
9. How can the information be analyzed?

Note that, ideally, the evaluator uses a combination of methods, for example, a
questionnaire to quickly collect a great deal of information from a lot of people, and
then interviews to get more in-depth information from certain respondents to the
questionnaires. Perhaps case studies could then be used for more in-depth analysis
of unique and notable cases, e.g., those who benefited or not from the program,
those who quit the program, etc.

Four Levels of Evaluation:

There are four levels of evaluation information that can be gathered from clients,
including getting their:
1. reactions and feelings (feelings are often poor indicators that your service made
lasting impact)
2. learning (enhanced attitudes, perceptions or knowledge)
3. changes in skills (applied the learning to enhance behaviors)
4. effectiveness (improved performance because of enhanced behaviors)

Usually, the farther your evaluation information gets down the list, the more useful is
your evaluation. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to reliably get information about
effectiveness. Still, information about learning and skills is quite useful.

Analyzing and Interpreting Information

Analyzing quantitative and qualitative data is often the topic of advanced research
and evaluation methods. There are certain basics which can help to make sense of
reams of data.

Always start with your evaluation goals:

When analyzing data (whether from questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, or
whatever), always start from review of your evaluation goals, i.e., the reason you
undertook the evaluation in the first place. This will help you organize your data and
focus your analysis. For example, if you wanted to improve your program by
identifying its strengths and weaknesses, you can organize data into program
strengths, weaknesses and suggestions to improve the program. If you wanted to
fully understand how your program works, you could organize data in the
chronological order in which clients go through your program. If you are conducting
an outcomes-based evaluation, you can categorize data according to the indicators
for each outcome.

Basic analysis of "quantitative" information (for information other than

commentary, e.g., ratings, rankings, yes's, no's, etc.):
1. Make copies of your data and store the master copy away. Use the copy for
making edits, cutting and pasting, etc.
2. Tabulate the information, i.e., add up the number of ratings, rankings, yes's, no's
for each question.
3. For ratings and rankings, consider computing a mean, or average, for each
question. For example, "For question #1, the average ranking was 2.4". This is more
meaningful than indicating, e.g., how many respondents ranked 1, 2, or 3.
4. Consider conveying the range of answers, e.g., 20 people ranked "1", 30 ranked
"2", and 20 people ranked "3".

Basic analysis of "qualitative" information (respondents' verbal answers in

interviews, focus groups, or written commentary on questionnaires):
1. Read through all the data.
2. Organize comments into similar categories, e.g., concerns, suggestions, strengths,
weaknesses, similar experiences, program inputs, recommendations, outputs,
outcome indicators, etc.
3. Label the categories or themes, e.g., concerns, suggestions, etc.
4. Attempt to identify patterns, or associations and causal relationships in the
themes, e.g., all people who attended programs in the evening had similar concerns,
most people came from the same geographic area, most people were in the same
salary range, what processes or events respondents experience during the program,
etc.
4. Keep all commentary for several years after completion in case needed for future
reference.

Interpreting Information:

1. Attempt to put the information in perspective, e.g., compare results to what you
expected, promised results; management or program staff; any common standards
for your services; original program goals (especially if you're conducting a program
evaluation); indications of accomplishing outcomes (especially if you're conducting
an outcomes evaluation); description of the program's experiences, strengths,
weaknesses, etc. (especially if you're conducting a process evaluation).
2. Consider recommendations to help program staff improve the program,
conclusions about program operations or meeting goals, etc.
3. Record conclusions and recommendations in a report document, and associate
interpretations to justify your conclusions or recommendations.

Reporting Evaluation Results:1.The level and scope of content depends

on to whom the report is intended, e.g., to bankers, funders,
employees, customers, clients, the public, etc.
2. Be sure employees have a chance to carefully review and discuss
the report. Translate recommendations to action plans, including who
 is going to do what about the program and by when.
3. Bankers or funders will likely require a report that includes an
executive summary (this is a summary of conclusions and
recommendations, not a listing of what sections of information are in
the report -- that's a table of contents); description of the organization
and the program under evaluation; explanation of the evaluation
goals, methods, and analysis procedures; listing of conclusions and
recommendations; and any relevant attachments, e.g., inclusion of
evaluation questionnaires, interview guides, etc. The banker or funder
may want the report to be delivered as a presentation, accompanied
by an overview of the report. Or, the banker or funder may want to
review the report alone.
4. Be sure to record the evaluation plans and activities in an
evaluation plan which can be referenced when a similar program
evaluation is needed in the future.

Contents of an Evaluation Report -- Example

An example of evaluation report contents is included later on below in this document.

Click Contents of an Evaluation Plan but, don't forget to look at the next section "Who
Should Carry Out the Evaluation".

Who Should Carry Out the Evaluation?

Ideally, management decides what the evaluation goals should be. Then an
evaluation expert helps the organization to determine what the evaluation methods
should be, and how the resulting data will be analyzed and reported back to the
organization. Most organizations do not have the resources to carry out the ideal
evaluation.

Still, they can do the 20% of effort needed to generate 80% of what they need to
know to make a decision about a program. If they can afford any outside help at all, it
should be for identifying the appropriate evaluation methods and how the data can
be collected. The organization might find a less expensive resource to apply the
methods, e.g., conduct interviews, send out and analyze results of questionnaires,
etc.

If no outside help can be obtained, the organization can still learn a great deal by
applying the methods and analyzing results themselves. However, there is a strong
chance that data about the strengths and weaknesses of a program will not be
interpreted fairly if the data are analyzed by the people responsible for ensuring the
program is a good one. Program managers will be "policing" themselves. This caution
is not to fault program managers, but to recognize the strong biases inherent in
trying to objectively look at and publicly (at least within the organization) report
about their programs. Therefore, if at all possible, have someone other than the
program managers look at and determine evaluation results.

Contents of an Evaluation Plan: Develop an evaluation plan to ensure

your program evaluations are carried out efficiently in the future. Note
that bankers or funders may want or benefit from a copy of this plan.
Ensure your evaluation plan is documented so you can regularly and efficiently carry
out your evaluation activities. Record enough information in the plan so that
someone outside of the organization can understand what you're evaluating and
how. Consider the following format for your report:
1. Title Page (name of the organization that is being, or has a
product/service/program that is being, evaluated; date)
2. Table of Contents
3. Executive Summary (one-page, concise overview of findings and
recommendations)
4. Purpose of the Report (what type of evaluation(s) was conducted, what decisions
are being aided by the findings of the evaluation, who is making the decision, etc.)
5. Background About Organization and Product/Service/Program that is being
evaluated
a) Organization Description/History
b) Product/Service/Program Description (that is being evaluated)
i) Problem Statement (in the case of nonprofits, description of the community need
that is being met by the product/service/program)
ii) Overall Goal(s) of Product/Service/Program
iii) Outcomes (or client/customer impacts) and Performance Measures (that can be
measured as indicators toward the outcomes)
iv) Activities/Technologies of the Product/Service/Program (general description of how
the product/service/program is developed and delivered)
v) Staffing (description of the number of personnel and roles in the organization that
are relevant to developing and delivering the product/service/program)
6) Overall Evaluation Goals (eg, what questions are being answered by the
evaluation)
7) Methodology
a) Types of data/information that were collected
b) How data/information were collected (what instruments were used, etc.)
c) How data/information were analyzed
d) Limitations of the evaluation (eg, cautions about findings/conclusions and how to
use the findings/conclusions, etc.)
8) Interpretations and Conclusions (from analysis of the data/information)
9) Recommendations (regarding the decisions that must be made about the
product/service/program)
Appendices: content of the appendices depends on the goals of the evaluation
report, eg.:
a) Instruments used to collect data/information
b) Data, eg, in tabular format, etc.
c) Testimonials, comments made by users of the product/service/program
d) Case studies of users of the product/service/program
e) Any related literature

Pitfalls to Avoid
1. Don't balk at evaluation because it seems far too "scientific." It's not. Usually the
first 20% of effort will generate the first 80% of the plan, and this is far better than
nothing.
2. There is no "perfect" evaluation design. Don't worry about the plan being perfect.
It's far more important to do something, than to wait until every last detail has been
tested.
3. Work hard to include some interviews in your evaluation methods. Questionnaires
don't capture "the story," and the story is usually the most powerful depiction of the
benefits of your services.
4. Don't interview just the successes. You'll learn a great deal about the program by
understanding its failures, dropouts, etc.
5. Don't throw away evaluation results once a report has been generated. Results
don't take up much room, and they can provide precious information later when
trying to understand changes in the program.