Purpose and approach to evaluation
The next step in designing an evaluation framework is establishing the purpose for the evaluation and deciding who will conduct and participate in it.
Consider why you need to conduct an evaluation and what are you going to do with the information. Some purposes are to:
- provide evidence of the outputs and outcomes for accountability and reporting purposes
- ensure community engagement activities are effective
- share experiences and learnings
- improve community engagement practice.
The audience for the evaluation
There are several potential audiences for evaluation, as follows:
- people with an interest in monitoring the activity to ensure it is effective
- people with a direct interest in the activity and/or some control over its future, such as managers and participants
- people with a direct interest in learning from activities, such as community engagement practitioners.
Who will conduct the evaluation?
Evaluations can be conducted entirely by internal staff or stakeholders or by external evaluators, or by a combination of both. The choice of who should conduct the evaluation depends on:
- the purpose of and audience for the evaluation
- political and personal considerations of participants
- the available financial resources, human resources, skills and expertise
- the time available for data collection and analysis
- the scale and profile of the activity to be evaluated
- the intended outputs of the evaluation.
Who should participate in the evaluation?
In general, evaluations should always strive for maximum involvement of key stakeholders. Stakeholders are in a unique position to identify and contribute data. Their involvement can lead to deeper and more accurate data interpretation. The involvement of stakeholders in evaluation is part of the participatory nature of engagement, and their decision-making and planning can be enhanced if they are involved appropriately in evaluation as well as engagement activities themselves.
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