How to Evaluate - York Consulting

Oldham and Rochdale HMREvaluation Techniques “How to Evaluate”opinions can produce high quality quotes and comments which can be usedto further validate more quantitative findings.3.21 Challenges: Focus groups can be an excellent opportunity to gather groupopinion on a subject matter; however they can be influenced by strongercharacters who voice their opinions louder than others. Facilitating a focusgroup is a skill. The focus group facilitator has a key role in ensuring that allmembers of a focus group have the opportunity to have their say withoutmaking quieter individuals feel like they have been “put on the spot”.Projects and Evaluators have to choose an appropriate individual to deliverthe focus group. One of the project workers who participants know wellcould help to get them engaged and open up, but in this situation, as withany of the evaluation methodologies, if a project worker were to deliver thesession there is a risk of bias responses. This could happen if participantsfeel they cannot critique the good and the bad of a project if the worker isthe one asking them the questions, and the project worker would have toensure that they do not only elaborate on the positive commentsparticipants made but also discuss the negative ones.3.22 Focus groups should be held where the target audience feel mostcomfortable. Our focus group for Groundwork’s evaluation was held withthe group sat on the pavement by their local kick pitch. The young peoplewere engaged and felt comfortable answering questions and were perhapsmore open and honest than they would have been in a more formal setting.One-to-one Consultations3.23 Summary: One-to-one consultations were carried out with a range ofindividuals. This included parents, residents, young people and thosedelivering the projects. Specific organised consultations were also carriedout with programme managers and stakeholders. Semi-structured topicguides were used and consultations focussed on experiences of theprogramme.40