21 Oct, 2020

Try This: A Simple Way to Get Program Feedback

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:00:38-04:00October 21st, 2020|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program design, program evaluation, Try This|0 Comments

*Try this out and let me know how it goes.*

I enjoy coming up with things on the fly, and today’s Try This is one of those moments.

I was hired by a client organization earlier on in my consulting business to conduct several focus groups for their program participants, all of whom were young high school girls attending a 6-week summer program.

During the first two focus groups, one question I asked was, “What would you change about this program?”

Interestingly, the participants enjoyed the program so much that they didn’t have any ideas on how they could improve the program.

When I got to the last two focus groups, I decided to change the question.

Before I share how I changed the question, let’s make one thing clear: It’s very possible your program participants really do enjoy your program, and there’s a lot of information to glean from this. But this client organization specifically wanted feedback on how to evolve the program and they noticed that, outside of exclaiming they enjoy the program, participants didn’t give in prior feedback on what they enjoyed and what they’d like to see based on previous evaluations.

In response to my client’s request, I shifted the question.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone responsible for developing, running and evaluating programs and services
Anyone interested in applying evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

Whatever setup you use for focus groups (though this can also be created as a survey, key informant interview, or as a World Cafe)

The steps:

(more…)

16 Oct, 2019

Try This: The Cookie Exercise

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:44:55-04:00October 16th, 2019|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program evaluation, Try This|0 Comments

*You don’t have to eat the cookie, but it might be tempting.*

Evaluative thinking involves identifying assumptions, posing thoughtful questions, pursuing deeper understanding through reflection and perspective-taking and making informed decisions in program planning, implementation, and evaluation.

It’s a key component to building evaluation capacity within an organization, company, or other entity. While I still conduct evaluations for clients, I’m finding myself more drawn to helping organizations build up this capacity so they can do it all themselves.

The primary reasons organizations conduct evaluations is to find out if 1) the program is meeting the needs of its intended audience(s), 2) if it’s financially feasible to maintain the program or service as is or if it needs to be scaled up or down, or 3) if it should be scrapped altogether.

It’s not enough for your staff to know the ins and outs of doing an evaluation. They need to harness the ability to think evaluatively about the programs they’re developing.

And what better way to try this out than with cookies?

Grab 3 different brands of cookies and let’s get started.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone responsible for developing, running and evaluating programs and services
Students interested in evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

If you’re the baking type: Bake three different types of the same cookie (using different chips or filling, different ingredients, etc.)
If you’re the store-bought type: Buy 3 different brands of the same cookie type. In order for this to work, the brands cannot have any recognizable marks in the design that will give clues on who makes them. In other words, you can have 3 brands of cookies that look like Oreos, as long as each brand doesn’t have “Oreo” labeled on them (we’re trying to avoid biases here)
Sheets of paper
Writing utensils (pens, pencils, markers)

As a heads-up: You don’t have to eat the cookies. But you might, for testing purposes.

(more…)

5 Oct, 2018

Ask Nicole: What Exactly Are You Evaluating?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:18:45-04:00October 5th, 2018|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: Ask Nicole, Capacity Building, program evaluation|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

I recently had a video meeting with one of my client organizations. We’re preparing for a presentation in a few weeks to orient some members of her staff to a newly-developed evaluation working group. They will be working directly with me on guiding the organization through the development of an evaluation framework for its programs and strategies, guided by the organization’s current strategic plan.

As we planned out the agenda and what topics to include, the staff member and I discussed various aspects of the evaluation design process, including logic models, theories of change, data collection and dissemination. In this discussion I touched on one aspect of the evaluation process that many would see as a given, but it’s actually more complex:

What exactly are you evaluating?

We ordinarily associate evaluation with the ending of a program, where we want to collect data to find out if what the program set out to do actually achieved its goals. But you can also evaluate the program as it’s being developed, or even evaluate if the program is appropriate enough to implement.

While there are multiple evaluation theories, there are five common types of evaluation:

(more…)

22 Aug, 2018

Tailor Your Strategy to Capture Your Stakeholders’ Attention

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:17:35-04:00August 22nd, 2018|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program evaluation, Research|0 Comments

Whether you’re a nonprofit, community group, foundation, agency, school (or somewhere in between), you have stakeholders: people who are impacted–directly and indirectly–by the success and outcomes of your programs and strategies.

You should have a plan in place for how you engage your stakeholders with the information you want to share. Before you can create your plan, let’s identify your three stakeholder types.

Step 1: Identify your stakeholders

Each stakeholder has a particular set of needs and wants, with levels of influence and varied interests. This can differ greatly across programs and strategies. Choose a program or strategy your currently implementing, and identify all possible stakeholders for that program or strategy. Next, break them down into these stakeholder categories:

Primary– A primary stakeholder is the group that most closely touches the program or strategy. For example, one of my past evaluation projects was for a local nonprofit. They wanted to conduct an internal evaluation to discover reasons for low volunteer engagement. Volunteers–both active and inactive–would be considered primary stakeholders.

Secondary– Secondary stakeholders are indirectly affected by the outcomes of a program or strategy. They serve as intermediaries. With our example above, the staff (both organizational and the clinic staff the volunteers worked for) can be secondary stakeholders.

Tertiary– Tertiary stakeholders are usually far removed from the impact of the program or strategy’s outcomes, but they can serve in an advisory capacity. In our example, the board of directors would be concerned a tertiary stakeholder.

Where you stakeholder falls depends on the program or strategy. In other words, a primary stakeholder for one program can turn into a tertiary stakeholder for another program.

Step 2: Use the Five Ws (and the H)

Now, let’s figure out how to engage your stakeholders based. And what better way to determine how to engage your stakeholders than using the Five Ws (and the H)?

(more…)

8 Aug, 2018

Try This: Curb Your Evaluation Anxiety

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:15:34-04:00August 8th, 2018|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: Capacity Building, program evaluation, Try This|0 Comments

With my program and evaluation clients, I offer the Evaluation Capacity Measure. It’s an assessment created by Ann Price of Community Evaluation Solutions , and I’ve revised it a bit to include some open-ended questions. The assessment assesses an organization’s current capacity to evaluate its programs, strategies and services and assesses its current support around evaluative thinking. Everyone from organizational leadership to board of director members are encouraged to take the assessment.

This assessment helps me to see what the current needs are, and it also gives clients a sense of what we can work on together in the evaluation capacity building process. I offer it to clients first as a baseline, then towards the end of our partnership together. Whether it’s a short-term or long-term project, clients like knowing their staff’s general views on evaluation, and how the process can be aligned with their respective roles and organizational mission and strategy. (At times, they may notice that what they expected to score lower on is higher than expected, and vice versa).

I recently administered the assessment for a new client, whose staff works remotely and is comprised of several departments that work individually and collectively on several programs and strategies. Leading up to sending the assessment to her colleagues, the staff member leading the project with me shared her nervousness about what the results may reveal about her staff, but is excited to see how the results can influence how they can proceed with their evaluation priorities.

The goal of program evaluation is to 1) see if your program is performing in the way it’s intended to and 2) facilitate organizational learning and improvement. In general, people tend to experience anxiety when they’re being evaluated. It’s like when you waited in a line with your classmates to see which kickball team captain would choose you for their team. You want the best players on your team, and the captains are sizing you up. Who is known to kick the farthest? Who has the capability to catch the ball mid-air? Who can run the fastest?

And when you’re last to be picked, it makes you feel a way. “Why wasn’t I one of the earlier picks?”, you asked. More often the not, the team captains probably chose their team based on who they’re friends with, but there’s a lot of emotional reactions that may come up.

You get into the real world of adulting, and the feeling is still there. This time, it surfaces when you’re meeting with your supervisor for you mid-year or annual review. You think you’re performing well in most areas, until you discover (through someone else’s perspective) that you’re not.

In “Strategies for Managing Evaluation Anxiety: Toward a Psychology of Program Evaluation” (American Journal of Evaluation, Vol. 23 Issue 3, 2002), Stewart Donaldson, Laura E. Googler, Michael Striven dubbed the term “excessive evaluation anxiety” (or XEA). Symptoms of XEA include:

Lack of access to important information and data
Compliance and cooperation problems
False reporting
Effects on bias and validity
Reduced utilization of evaluation findings.

This can lead to stakeholders behaving in ways that can destroy the credibility of evaluation findings (and of evaluators). When the findings of a program’s evaluation yield that it’s not performing in the way it was intended, the blame game can happen. Instead of falling victim to XEA, how can you and your staff become more open to viewing the process as a learning experience?

To give you a taste of the Evaluation Capacity Measure I give to my clients (and to help jumpstart the conversation with your staff around evaluation anxiety), here are some questions you can walk your staff through:

Here’s what you need:

Flip chart paper, chalkboards, or walls
Note cards
Pens or pencils

Designate five open areas around the room. Each area will have one question at the top of the flip chart paper, chalkboard, or wall.

Give staff enough time to answer the questions thoughtfully . When time is up, have staff place their note cards under the designated question.

Next, divide up your staff so that each question has several eyes on it. Have staff place the note cards into themes, grouping similar responses together.

Last, have staff do a “walk-around”, where they can view the themes for each question. To close out the exercise, discuss the themes with staff and create an action plan to address the themes.

The steps:

Have your staff answer the following questions alone on note cards:

(more…)

Try This: A Simple Way to Get Program Feedback

Try This: The Cookie Exercise

Ask Nicole: What Exactly Are You Evaluating?

What exactly are you evaluating?

Tailor Your Strategy to Capture Your Stakeholders’ Attention

Step 1: Identify your stakeholders

Step 2: Use the Five Ws (and the H)

Try This: Curb Your Evaluation Anxiety

Here’s what you need:

The steps:

This Is A Custom Widget