Step 5: Plan the Evaluation

people working together

Step 5 focuses on planning the evaluation, yet this process actually begins much earlier in the strategic planning process. Evaluation involves collecting, analyzing, and using data to determine the following:

  • If your activities are effective
  • If your activities are efficient
  • If your activities are being delivered as intended
  • If activity participants are satisfied with the activities
  • How your activities might be refined or improved

This is not an exhaustive list of all the benefits evaluation can provide. Evaluation can also show the value of your activities to funders, decision makers, and other stakeholders.

For a more detailed description of Step 5, visit SPRC’s online course A Strategic Planning Approach to Suicide Prevention

What’s Involved in Planning an Evaluation?

Evaluations can measure the outcomes of your activities. Because evaluation can involve tracking the implementation of your activities, it can also be an important part of implementing your activities successfully. Evaluation planning begins early. This ensures that you are asking questions that are important to your stakeholders, and that the activities you have selected are well aligned with the outcomes you expect. Evaluation involves creating a feasible evaluation strategy that is within your budget and clearly linked to questions you want the evaluation to answer about your prevention activities.

There are four main tasks when planning an evaluation: 1

Why Use an Evaluation Specialist?

Consider bringing an evaluator onto your team as early as possible, particularly if your existing team does not have the capacity to conduct the evaluation design that you’ve selected, or if you think you might need help with a specific component of your evaluation, like data collection or analysis. A trained evaluator can save you time and money by making sure that your evaluation is headed in the right direction with an appropriate design and high-quality measures. 

If you do not have an evaluator on staff and cannot afford to hire one, you may be able to collaborate with a faculty member or graduate student from a local college or university at no charge or for a reduced fee.

Resources:

  1. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d). A framework for program evaluation. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/eval/framework/index.htm