An 8-step guide to better evaluation

Thinking early about good evaluation approaches can help design the programme and the evaluation in a way that provides more insight into how a policy works.

In order to determine whether or not a project is a success, we need to think about what success would look like, and therefore how it should be measured.

The question that we really want answered is not ‘what works’ but ‘what works better’?

The fundamental idea here is to make sure we are comparing groups that are similar. Such comparisons help address concerns that other factors might be driving changes for participants in a programme.

The availability of appropriate data is often one of the biggest stumbling blocks, especially when trying to retrofit evaluation to programmes that are already well under way.

In an ideal world, we’d want to think about when policy effects were likely to occur – and evaluate accordingly.

One of the major problems with improving evaluation and getting it embedded in the policy design process arises because people think that evaluation is too complicated.

Don’t forget the need to bring the people or organisations you expect to act on the results in along with the evaluation process.