Making your evaluation a success: 9 top tips

Think evaluation may be too difficult for the context in which you operate?

Think again.

The Social Innovation Partnership (TSIP) and Nesta want to share with you our top tips on overcoming some of the core challenges associated with evaluation. This knowledge is drawn from a current project supporting ten hospitals to measure the impact of their volunteering programmes, Nesta’s Helping in Hospitals programme, funded by Cabinet Office and the Department of Health. While these learnings are particularly salient in a hospital context, most are universally relevant too.

Struggling to get your staff engaged in the evaluation?

  • Magical Theories of Change: Always begin your evaluation with a Theory of Change session that involves your core team. We know from experience that this is an invaluable exercise that creates buy in and clarifies exactly what job you want the evaluation to do. Check out this guide on creating a Theory of Change.
  • Enthuse your staff: Getting staff on board with the evaluation can be very tricky, but try to: a) demonstrate the purpose of the evaluation; b) explain how it will benefit them directly; and c) ensure they feel clear on what (if anything) they need to do. The ten hospitals in our current project have great stories to tell about ways in which to successfully engage ward staff – watch out for the Helping in Hospital report in Spring 2016 for valuable insights.​​​
  • Delivery comes first: If you are the funder of the programme and the evaluation, make sure you maintain a healthy balance of focus between service delivery and evaluation to prevent grantees feeling it’s all about evaluation.​

Struggling to measure your outcomes?

  • Consult others: Many outcomes are hard to measure, but not impossible. To brainstorm ideas and find existing, useful measurement tools, talk to organisations that are similar to you, and sector and evaluation experts.
  • Boost your staff skills: If your staff lack the necessary evaluation skills, get an evaluation expert to give you a practice-oriented training session to set you on the right track.
  • Build on existing data: There’s no need to add yet another complicated data collection system to the pile. Build on what your organisation already has in place, using existing data, and make tweaks to add more insight if necessary.

      Struggling to get good quality results?

  • Plan handovers well: Many organisations experience high staff turnover, so to avert a fall in the quality of your evaluation, be sure to conduct dedicated handover meetings with all the relevant people.
  • Quality-check your data early: If an evaluation expert is involved, make sure they conduct a data quality check early on and half way through, to avoid ending up with a nonsensical excel spreadsheet that fails to provide you with the answers you’re looking for. This means checking for missing (or strange) data indicating there’s a problem with how it is collected, and resolving the issue as soon as possible.
  • Make use of comparison group opportunities: If you are slowly rolling out a new service or treatment, make use of the organisational branches or geographical areas that do not receive this service or treatment just yet, with the purpose to generate a comparison group that will strengthen the credibility of your evaluation findings.

These insights have proven key to overcoming the common challenges in setting up an evaluation and maintaining its quality. Not only are all stakeholders actively contributing to the evaluation, but also our approach has put the project in a good position to produce stronger evidence than is usually possible during the pilot phase. We want others to benefit from these insights, too.

The Social Innovation Partnership (TSIP) is a trusted advisor to public, private and social sector organisations seeking to maximise their social impact. We work with organisations to clarify their mission and what it is they want to achieve. We then support them to develop the systems and skills they need to embed evidence and innovation in their work. With this combination of strategic and practical support, they can measure, communicate and grow their social impact. Find out more at www.tsip.co.uk

 

 

Author

Rahel Späth

Rahel Späth is an evidence consultant for the Helping in Hospitals and Young People Helping in Hospitals initiatives. This involves working with the Health Lab team and the initiatives…