Posts filed under ‘Evaluation use’
Five tips to make your evaluation more influential
Here is a useful article from the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank. They highlight five tips to make your evaluation more influential as illustrated in the infographic below. I certainly agree with all the tips; I’d just add that influence may not be immediate and direct; it may take for some years to manifest itself and often in unexpected ways (to be explained in a future post!)
Visual summaries of evaluation reports
In commu
nicating evaluation findings, challenges are often seen with the key product to do so – the evaluation report. Often evaluation reports suffer from being long, wordy and just plain boring! Therefore, we have to find new ways to communication evaluation findings.
One way I find interesting is the use of a visual summary of findings – that summarises the evaluation findings graphically and in a limited number of pages. I recently had the opportunity to use this format for an evaluation for Oxfam – as seen in the image in this post. You can view the full summary by clicking on the image (it brings you to a pdf file).
10 evaluation infographics
Infographics are visual images used to represent information and/or data. Increasingly we see infographics used to communicate key evaluation findings. It can be an excellent tool to communication key findings quickly and to reach diverse audiences. The presentation below contains 10 evaluation infographic that I’ve collated from various evaluations. I think these examples show the different possibilities and options for how you can use this tool to communicate key findings.
(disclaimer – I’ve been involved in one of the evaluations featured – that done by Oxfam)
5 resources on communicating evaluation results
I had the pleasure last week to run a workshop for 2 days in Berne, Switzerland on the theme Integrating Communication in Evaluation organised by the Swiss Evaluation Society and LAUCO Training and Evaluation. In my research for the workshop, I discovered some new resources on communicating evaluation results, here are a selection:
4. Communicating and Reporting on an Evaluation – from the American Red Cross & CRS (2008), (pdf) >>
5. Tips for delivering negative results (blog post – J. Sinclair), 2013 >>
This photo from Patricia Goldschmid of myself explaining some points at the workshop – thanks again for all the participants for making it such an enjoyable experience!
Glenn
Using video in evaluation
The Better Evaluation blog has published a series of posts focusing on the use of video in evaluation:
– Participatory Video as a tool to engage communities and stakeholders in evaluation by Soledad Muniz
– Learning about evaluation from the inside using video by Paul Barese
– Using video to communicate evaluation findings by Glenn O’Neil (this writer)
Evaluation reporting: A guide
From the US CDC, here is an interesting guide: Evaluation reporting: A guide to help ensure use of evaluation findings (pdf).
It contains many tips and advice on how to craft your evaluation report to make it more *usable*…
Presenting evaluation findings – Using Prezi
I’ve written before about the challenges of presenting evaluation findings – and the need to find creative ways to present findings. No doubt many readers would have already come across Prezi, a new presentation software that you see used often these days. I’ve recently worked on a research project for the Joint Standards Initiative where we presented our research results in a Prezi as you can see displayed below. It is allows the results to presented in visually appealing way and I believe communicates well the main points.
This Prezi was produced by Peter from YourPrezi.
Data visualization for evaluation
If you are interested in how evaluation results are presented as I am, then you might be interested in this fact sheet (pdf) from IDRC on data visualization for communicating research and evaluation findings. It contains some fascinating information on how data visualization can be used (and misused). As can be seen in the chart below it shows that evaluation reports are on the low end in terms of their usage of data visualization.
10 tips for delivering negative evaluation results
From the Better Evaluation Blog, a very useful post on how to deliver negative evaluation results – that they have summarised in ten tips:
1. Use a participatory approach from the start
2. Discuss possible negative results in the early contracting and design stages
3. Inform clients immediately and often – a ‘no surprises’ approach
4. Build in time for course correction
5. Question the evaluation plan
6. Emphasize the positives
7. Tell the truth
8. Present results in terms of lessons learned
9. Provide suggestions for addressing deficiencies
10. Involve stakeholders in identifying obstacles and ways to overcome them
Communicating Evaluation Findings: Advice from the Field
An interesting post on the Learning Portal for Design, Monitoring and Evaluation for Peacebuilding that focuses on communicating evaluation findings and brings forward three tips for those who hope to influence decisions with evaluation data:
- Answer the right questions;
- Speak their language;
- Be humble.
intelligent measurement 