It is easy to get caught up in the idea of using measures that have been validated through research studies (e.g., the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale) as your tools of choice. While there are definite benefits to this (see below), there are also significant drawbacks. As with all things in evaluation, using existing measures should be done very deliberately and should not be considered the default option when planning your evaluation.
When disaster strikes, it tears the curtain away from the festering problems that we have beneath them.
- Barack Obama
Rape crisis centers, other sexual violence service providers, and community-based organizations often struggle to maintain adequate resources to serve their communities. When this is the case, it can feel difficult to earmark money for evaluation. However, evaluation is a critical and integral part of accountability and provision of effective, high quality services. Additionally, it’s still true that resources can be tight and that some funders, while requiring evaluation, impose restrictions on how much money can be spent on evaluation practice.
In a effort to learn from preventionists and evaluation partners around the country, this section of the toolkit provides case examples and case studies in sexual violence prevention evaluation. If you have a lesson learned that you would like to share, you can submit your case examples for consideration by filing out this brief
Colleges and universities can be great resources for agencies that need assistance with developing evaluation processes for their work. Depending on your budget and the scope of your evaluation, there are options to hire professors or graduate students for assistance. Also, it’s not unusual for students to need program evaluation internships or projects for classes.
To increase participant engagement with questionnaires, they can be administered through interactive means rather than on a piece of paper or through a computer. Interactive options have the potential to be more engaging for participants by increasing their kinesthetic involvement and feeling less like tests (Dodson & Paleo, 2011).
Consider the following examples:
When you read the question above, do you immediately think about data analysis skills? Or survey design skills? While an evaluator needs skills in data collection and analysis, these are only two of the many areas of knowledge and skill that help an evaluator succeed. An organization’s capacity to conduct evaluation stretches well beyond any one individual’s knowledge-level or skill sets.
Comprehensive primary prevention work requires that we work beyond the individual and relationship levels in order to create deep and meaningful change in our communities. The prospect of evaluating beyond the individual and relationship levels of our work can seem daunting. However, although the potential scope of data collection is larger for community-level initiatives, the evaluation principles and practices are the same.
When data are analyzed, they don’t automatically tell you a story or indicate how to act on them. In order to act on the data, you need to make meaning of the data through a process of interpretation. This is the point when you look at the analyzed data and say “so what?”
This step helps you determine potential explanations for why the data came out the way they did so that you know what actions to take as a result.