Posts tagged ‘evaluation’
Using infographics to present evaluation findings
I’ve written previously about using infographics to summarise evaluation findings; here is another recent example of where my evaluation team used an infographic to present the findings of an evaluation – it’s only a partial view – you can see the complete infographic on page 5 of this report (pdf).
Tips for young / emerging evaluators
The Evaluation for Development blog from Zenda Ofir has been collating tips for young / emerging evaluators – that even experienced evaluators will find interesting. Here are some highlights:
From Zenda herself:
Top Tip 1. Open your mind. Read
Top Tip 2. Be mindful and explicit about what frames and shapes your evaluative judgments.
Top Tip 3. Be open to what constitutes “credible evidence”.
Top Tip 4. Focus a good part of your evaluative activities on “understanding”.
Top Tip 5. Be or become a systems thinker who can also deal with some complexity concepts.
Read more about these tips>>
From Juha Uitto:
Top Tip 1. Think beyond individual interventions and their objectives.
Top Tip 2. Understand, deal with and assess choices and trade-offs made or that should have been made.
Top Tip 3. Methods should not drive evaluations.
Top Tip 4. Think about our interconnected world, and implore others to do the same.
Read more about these tips>>
From Benita Williams:
Top Tip 1. The cruel tyranny of deadlines.
Top Tip 2. Paralysis from juggling competing priorities.
Top Tip 3. Annoyance when you are the messenger who gets shot at
Top Tip 4. Working with an evaluand that affects you emotionally
Top Tip 5. Feeling rejected if you do not land an assignment
Top Tip 6. Feeling demoralized when you work with people who do not understand evaluation
Top Tip 7. Feeling discouraged because of wasted blood sweat and tears
Top Tip 8. Feeling lazy if you try to maintain work-life balance when other consultants seem to work 24/7
Top Tip 9. Feeling overwhelmed by all of the skills and knowledge you should have
Read more about these tips>>
And from Michael Quinn Patton, just one tip:
Top tip 1: Steep yourself in the classics.
Read more about this tip>>
New UN SG: “we need a culture of evaluation”
The new United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in his “audition” speech highlights evaluation, saying:
“We need a culture of evaluation – independent and real time evaluation with full transparency”
Couldn’t agree more! Watch below at about 2.50 minutes…
Using cartoons to communicate on evaluation
Here is a great example (pdf) from the ILO evaluation office of using cartoons to explain an evaluation process / service; it just shows that visual methods can also be used to explain evaluation processes and services – in addition to communicating evaluation results.
The checklist as an evaluation tool: examples from other fields
Rick Davies of the Monitoring and Evaluation NEWS blog has published an interesting post exploring how surgeons and pilots use checklist – and lists other interesting resources on this issue.
See also my earlier posts here and here on using checklists.
Three guides for focus groups
Recently I was running a series of focus groups and wanted to update myself on the “ways” and “hows” – I found the following three guides useful:
Guidelines for Conducting a Focus Group (Eliot & Associates) (pdf) >>
Presenting evaluation data effectively
For those interested in presenting evaluation data effectively, here is a recent post from Nick Herft on the BetterEvaluation blog with some very useful tips and guidance.
Using video for evaluation baseline
I’ve written before about using video for data collection and reporting evaluation results – but I’ve just come across this interesting example of using video for a baseline, that is to record the situation before the project starts.
Miki Tsukamoto of the the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies explains this approach on the AEA365 blog which they used for a project in Uganda. A summarised version of the resulting video is found below. They will return in 2017 to make an “endline” video – so stand-by!
How to transform evaluation findings into infographics
I wrote recently on using infographics for evaluation – and just recently I came across an excellent post from Joitske Hulsebosch on the BetterEvaluation blog on how to transform evaluation findings into infographics – also providing some hints on software you can use yourself. And l love this – an inforgraphic from Elissa Schloesser on how to create infographics! (click on it to see it bigger).
Evaluation results – what’s the message?
Normally for communicating on a project, we would consider what the main messages are we want to communicate at the initial stages. However, when communicating evaluation results, we have to wait until the initial findings are being developed – as key messages will normally be on the findings and not on the evaluation itself (not denying it’s important to communicate before and during the evaluation…).
So when results are being formulated, this is the moment to consider what the key messages to communicate from the evaluation are.
Seems easy? As Professor Cronbach said:
“Commissioners of evaluations complain that the messages from evaluations are not useful, while evaluators complain that the messages are not used.”
The challenge of communicating evaluation results is to determine what are the key messages you want to communicate from the (often) significant body of findings, conclusions and recommendations. Often it helps to do this in a systematic way – a messaging strategy:
- What is the most significant message coming out of the evaluation findings?
- What are the secondary messages (maximum four) coming out of the evaluation findings?
- What is the supporting information for these messages?
It then helps to map these out, as seen in the example below:
It is also useful for some evaluations to determine messages per audience, for example, senior management, politicians, funders, project managers and staff. Messages are simplistic and are not designed to be distributed directly to audiences. More so, they provide the template for all communication activities. Messaging strategies are all about making choices and determining what are the most important points you want to get across.
intelligent measurement 