PPA 502 – Lecture 9b How to Communicate Evaluation Findings

Who Needs to Know What and When?  Fundamental rules. –The information must be communicated to the appropriate potential users. –Reports must address issues which the users perceive to be important. –Reports must be delivered in time to be useful and in a form that is clearly understood by the intended users.

Who Needs to Know What and When?  Evaluator’s Role –Helper and advisor to the program planners and developers (formative). –Producing a summary statement about the general effects and accomplishments of the program (summative).

Who Needs to Know What and When?  Understanding your primary users and audiences. –Know your audiences (actual audiences). –Find out what information the users need and why they need it.  Different users want different information – even to answer the same question.  Some users do not know what they need.  Some users expect the evaluation to support a particular point of view.  For some users, the information needs change during the course of the evaluation. –Try to understand the user’s viewpoint. –Submit the report in time to be useful.

Who Needs to Know What and When?  Develop a reporting plan. –Make a list of primary users and if feasible the secondary users whom you would like to affect. –Add to the list a thumbnail sketch of what you know about your desired users. –Draw up a master chart of all of your evaluation activities, and carefully mark all reporting deadlines. –Consider other points in your evaluation process and in your users’ action plans when you can provide relevant information. –Using the information from the chart, organize a time line so that you will keep track of important reporting dates.

Forms of Communicating Evaluation Findings.  Key questions: –To what extent and in what specific ways is the information relevant to the user’s real and compelling problems? –To what extent is the information practical from the user’s perspective? –To what extent is the information useful and immediately applicable to the user’s situation? –What information will the user consider credible and what reporting practices will support that credibility? –To what extent is the information understandable to primary users? In what ways might the reporting practices have to be adjusted so that the information is understandable to other audiences? –How might reporting practices ensure that information is delivered in a timely fashion so that it might be most useful?

Forms of Communicating Evaluation Findings.

Formative Communication  Formative evaluator reports to program planners and personnel rather than distant funding people.  Communication is frequent and flexible.  Evaluator monitors program.  High premium on interpersonal skills.  Types of reports: –Implementation reports. –Progress reports. –Technical reports on a single issue.

Summative Communication  Written and detailed report.  Outline in Chapter 4 of Morris, FitzGibbon, and Freeman.

Tips on Evaluation Message  Relate the information to necessary actions or decisions.  Make the report credible.  Give the audience what it needs – and no more.  Present an attractive, evocative report that matches the style of the audience.

About the Written Medium  Start with the most important information. –Write as though the reader will never finish the entire document.  Highlight the important points.  Make your report readable.

About Verbal Presentation  Make the presentation interesting and varied.  Do what comes naturally.  Make the visuals large and simple.  Involve the audience in the presentation.

About Difficult Audiences  Have a primary user present the content of the report to someone else.  Have someone else deliver the information.  Reinforce, reinforce, reinforce.

About Working with the Press  Train reporters.  Write news releases.  Be honest with reporters.