Enhancing Care for Older People - Health Service Executive

It is important when planning a PD initiative to prepare and agree what evaluation framework
will be used. The tools and approaches that may be needed can then be identified. Questions
to guide the process are outlined below.
Questions to guide the process of evaluation
• Did it work?
• What has been achieved?
• How was it achieved?
• If the plan was not achieved, what were the barriers/obstacles?
• What was the learning?
• What do we do now?
• How will we do it?
• Who will support/challenge us?
• How will we evaluate?
The evaluation approach as described by Guba and Lincoln (1989) exploring Claims,
Concerns and Issues (CCIs) can be used in this process.
5.4 Claims, Concerns and Issues (CCIs)
CCIs can be carried out as part of a formal evaluation. CCIs can, for example, be used to
evaluate how effective a meeting was or can be used to set an agenda for a meeting. Issues
that arise on the ward can also be addressed using CCIs. This framework originated from
Guba and Lincoln’s (1989) Fourth Generation Evaluation work (McCormack et al., 2004).
• Claims are favourable assertions about the topic you are evaluating.
• Concerns are any unfavourable assertions about the topic and its implementation.
• Issues are questions that any reasonable person might ask about the topic and its
implementation and usually arise from concerns.
When considering the issues, the PD group should use ‘How’ and ‘What’ statements to address
the questions identified. For example, if the concern was about poor communication within
the unit the question could be:
• what can we do to improve our communication?
• How can we ensure that our communication within the unit is more effective?
The framework for CCIs is presented in Appendix 10.
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