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• Which aspects of the outcome evaluation
plan best fit with your organization’s
priorities Only rarely does a
communication program have adequate
resources to evaluate all activities. You
may have to illustrate your program’s
contribution to organizational priorities to
ensure continued funding. If this is the
case, it may be wise to evaluate those
aspects most likely to contribute to the
organization’s mission (assuming that
those are also the ones most likely to
result in measurable changes).
Conducting Outcome Evaluation
Conduct outcome evaluation by following
these steps:
1. Determine what information the
evaluation must provide.
2. Define the data to collect.
3. Decide on data collection methods.
4. Develop and pretest data
collection instruments.
5. Collect data.
6. Process data.
7. Analyze data to answer the
evaluation questions.
8. Write an evaluation report.
9. Disseminate the evaluation report.
See a description of each step below.
1. Determine What Information the
Evaluation Must Provide
An easy way to do this is to think about the
decisions you will make based on the
evaluation report. What questions do you
need to answer to make those decisions
EVALUATION CONSTRAINTS
Every program planner faces limitations
when conducting an outcome
evaluation. You may need to adjust your
evaluation to accommodate constraints
such as the following:
• Limited funds
• Limited staff time or expertise
• Length of time allotted to the
program and its evaluation
• Organizational restrictions on hiring
consultants or contractors
• Policies that limit your ability to
collect information from the public
• Difficulty in defining the program’s
objectives or in establishing consensus
on them
• Difficulty in isolating program effects
from other influences on the intended
audience in “real world” situations
• Management perceptions of the
evaluation’s value
These constraints may make the ideal
evaluation impossible. If you must
compromise your evaluation’s design,
data collection, or analysis to fit
limitations, decide whether the
compromises will make the evaluation
results invalid. If your program faces
severe constraints, do a small-scale
evaluation well rather than a large-scale
evaluation poorly. Realize that it is not
sensible to conduct an evaluation if it is
not powerful enough to detect a
statistically significant change.
110 Assessing Effectiveness and Making Refinements