Step 5: Create A Plan For Evaluation

At the beginning of this chapter we posed three questions that are central to the process of planning your mental health promotion initiative:

• What am I trying to achieve?

• What am I going to do?

• How will I know whether I’ve been successful?

The third question means that you will need to include plans for evaluation in your overall plan for your project. Evaluation is an integral part of your overall plan, and shouldn’t be added as an afterthought. If you plan a project, carry it out, and then think about evaluating it, it’s often too late to capture the information you need to do so.

Why Develop An Evaluation Plan?

If you spend some time planning the evaluation before the project actually gets under way, you will be sure to produce an evaluation that tells you what you really want to know about your project.

It’s worthwhile to develop an evaluation plan because it:

• guides you through each step of the process of evaluation;

• helps you decide what kind of information you and your stakeholders really need;

• keeps you from wasting time gathering information that isn’t needed;

• helps you identify the best possible methods and strategies for getting the information you need;

• helps you come up with a reasonable and realistic timeline for evaluation;

• is required by most funders;

• will help you improve your mental health promotion initiative!

When Should You Develop An Evaluation Plan?

It’s best to develop an evaluation plan before your begin to implement your initiative. The earlier you develop and begin to implement it, the better off your initiative will be, and the more positive the outcomes will be at the end. As you are developing and writing your goals and objectives, you should be anticipating the end of the project, especially since you will be relying heavily on your goals and objectives to carry out the evaluation.

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Where Do You Begin?

Evaluation is a huge topic, and it can be pretty intimidating, especially to those of us who don’t have an extensive background in research. It needn’t be intimidating, however, because the basic techniques that you will need to conduct an effective evaluation of your initiative are really very straightforward.

Your evaluation should address the simple questions that are important to your community, your partners, and your funders. The following five key evaluation questions can be applied to a variety of different project activities. Seeking answers to these five key evaluation questions¹ will help guide the evaluation process throughout your project:

1. What?
Did we do what we said we would do?

2. Why?
What did we learn about what worked and what didn’t work?

3. So what?
What difference did it make that we did this work?

4. Now what?
What could we do differently?

5. Then what?
How do we plan to use evaluation findings for continuous learning?

We will return to these questions in Chapter 5, where we will look more closely at developing the specific questions that will guide your evaluation.

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Who Are Your Stakeholders, And What Do They Want To See In An Evaluation?

For your evaluation to be effective and helpful in terms of finding out the kind of information that you want to know, it should be designed specifically to fit the needs of your stakeholders, and the realities of your project.

Each type of stakeholder will have a different perspective on your project, and will want to know different things in the evaluation. It would be helpful to take some time to brainstorm about who your stakeholders are, and what they might want to know about the evaluation, before you begin making your evaluation plan.

• Community stakeholders are people like you, volunteers and staff of community agencies who are involved in your initiative. They are all those people in your community who could benefit from or contribute to your project. Most often, community stakeholders will want to use the results of the evaluation to guide them in making decisions about the project, and where they are putting their efforts.

• Funders are those people or organizations that donate financial and in-kind resources to your project. Most funders want to know how their money is being spent, so you’ll find that they often have specific evaluation requirements² . Generally speaking, though, most funders are interested in knowing how many people were reached and served by the initiative, as well as whether the initiative had the community-level impact it intended to have.

• You may have decided to work with University or College-based researchers on your mental health promotion project. Not all groups will have access to, or desire to collaborate with outside researchers³ and evaluators. Those who do choose to work with research teams will have an additional stakeholder, with their own concerns, ideas and questions for the evaluation. Researchers may be interested in finding out whether any improvements in community mental health were a result of your initiative. They might also want to study the overall structure of your initiative to identify the conditions under which these improvements were achieved.

You and your stakeholders will probably be making decisions that affect your initiative based on the results of your evaluation. Your evaluation should therefore yield honest and accurate information - it should be structured in such a way that it captures both the successes and limitations of your initiative. Planning well in advance is one way to ensure that your evaluation meets everyone’s expectations.

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Step 6: Identify An Action Plan >

1. Adapated from The Program Evaluation Took Kit: A Blueprint for Public Health. Ottawa: Ontario Ministry of Health. 1996.
2. Each funding agency has a unique approach and demonds, so you'll have to check those out specifically. We'll talk more about funders' requirements in Chapter 3: Securing Resources.
3. Contact departments of social sciences and social work, and community health at local colleges and universities to find out about research and evaluation teams that may be interested in collaboarting with your projects.