PART TWO
evaluation team found they needed to frame the issues in terms of the people’s lives and landmarks.Workshops originally designed for almost a dozen local communities were split into smaller areas of only a few local communities that were related to one another, and focused on topics directly affecting those communities. The analysis of the customer interviews also yielded important information about how to structure the workshops; what audience mixes made the most sense; the timing and locations which would be most effective; and the topics which were most relevant to particular communities. For each lesson learned from the analysis and interpretation of the surveys, the staff members made relevant changes to the content and format of the workshops.Through additional analysis of post-workshop evaluation surveys and informal follow-up calls, they found these changes yielded both increased attendance, and a stronger educational vehicle for the goals of the program.This next phase of analysis and interpretation of post-workshop data is also providing the evaluation team with important new questions to address, including: Should this workshop be an ongoing series over a longer time period? Are participants interested in creating a network and problem-solving group out of this workshop experience around groundwater issues? How might we maintain and support that network? Example 2: In the case of the national organization serving disadvantaged women, there is a good example of how a change in evaluation questions and primary data collection methods led to new interpretations and findings.These new interpretations, in turn, led to important changes in organizational priorities. As we discussed in an earlier section, the first evaluation focused on whether a pilot program for disadvantaged women worked. Designed as a traditional impacts study, the evaluation consisted primarily of client surveys and structured follow-up interviews—effective and appropriate methods to address the primary evaluation question: Did the program work? However, staff realized after reading the evaluation report that although they did want evidence of whether the program was successful, there were many other critical questions which were not addressed in this first evaluation process.When a second evaluation was commissioned for the following year, staff decided it was important to work with the evaluators
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Evaluation Handbook