Evaluations

Photo of employee Beth Mulligan

3/29/18

Creative Ways to Get Useful and Actionable Data for a Small Budget Needs Assessment

The American Evaluation Association invited their Topic Interest Groups (TIGs) to each take over their blog for a week in 2018. As part of the Needs Assessment TIG, Beth and Kate were invited to write one of the blogs with tips for doing needs assessments. With help from Matt Bruce, they wrote about how to […]

By Beth MulliganRead More

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12/7/17

How do you measure the value of an experience?

When I think about the professional development I did last week, I would summarize it thusly: an unexpected, profound experience. I was given the opportunity to attend RIVA moderator training and I walked away with more than I ever could have dreamed I would get. Do you know that experience where you think back to […]

By Greg HornbackRead More

Photo of employee Beth Mulligan

11/22/17

Measurement Ideas in Evaluation

Kate Darwent and I are just back from the annual conference of the American Evaluation Association (AEA), which was held in Washington, DC this year.  We attended talks on a wide variety of topics, and attended business meetings for two interest groups (Needs Assessment and Independent Consulting).  Below, I discuss some of the current thinking […]

By Beth MulliganRead More

Photo of employee David Kennedy

11/3/17

Keeping it constant: 3 things to keep in mind with your trackers

When conducting a program evaluation or customer tracker (e.g., brand, satisfaction, etc.), we are often collecting input at two different points in time and then measuring the difference. While the concept is straightforward, the challenge is keeping everything as consistent as possible so we can say that the actual change is NOT a result of […]

By David KennedyRead More

Photo of employee Beth Mulligan

9/7/17

Defining Best Practices and Evidence-Based Programs

The field of evaluation, like any field, has a lot of jargon.  Jargon provides a short-hand for people in the field to talk about complex things without having to use a lot of words or background explanation, but for the same reason, it’s confusing to people outside the field. A couple of phrases that we […]

By Beth MulliganRead More

Photo of employee Beth Mulligan

9/3/17

When experiences can lead you astray

Many organizations tell me that they hear from their participants all the time telling them how much the program changed their lives.  Understandably, those experiences matter a lot to organizations and they want to capture those experiences in their evaluations. Recently I heard a podcast that perfectly captured the risks in relying too heavily on […]

By Beth MulliganRead More

Photo of employee Beth Mulligan

4/11/17

Engagement in evaluation

Engaging program participants in the evaluation is known as participatory evaluation.  (See Matt Bruce’s recent blog on participatory research for more detail about this approach.) The logic of participatory evaluation often resonates with human services providers.  It empowers service recipients to define their needs and goals for the program. It can be eye opening for […]

By Beth MulliganRead More

Photo of employee Kate Darwent

11/30/16

Writing an RFP

So you’ve finally reached a point where you feel like you need more information to move forward as an organization, and, even more importantly, you’ve been able to secure some amount of funding to do so. Suddenly you find yourself elbow deep in old request-for-proposals (RFPs), both from your organization and others, trying to craft […]

By Kate DarwentRead More

Photo of employee Beth Mulligan

8/24/16

Beyond the logic model: Improve program outcomes by mapping causes of success and failure

Logic modeling is common in evaluation work, but did you know there are a variety of other tools that can help visualize important program elements and improve planning to ensure success? One such tool is success mapping.  A success map can be used to outline the steps needed to implement a successful program.  It can […]

By Beth MulliganRead More

Photo of employee Beth Mulligan

3/12/15

Fresh Evaluation Ideas for Spring

As an evaluator, it’s really easy to draft a thousand lines of questioning to capture every nuance in every conceivable outcome that might result from a particular program.  I want to know everything, and I want to understand everything deeply, and so do the organizations I work with. Yet collecting too much data burdens both […]

By Beth MulliganRead More