Introduction

If your evaluator has been on board throughout your planning process, he or she already understands what your proposed program activities are and why you chose them. In any event, the planning work you have done so far will make an evaluator’s job a lot easier.

In another context, the initial audience research and environmental assessment you conducted to plan your program might have been called formative evaluation. On top of that, you have already specified the behavioral determinants that should be affected by your program activities. And you got a big head start on evaluation when you quantified your reach and outcome objectives.

Now it's time to make decisions about how to evaluate your program. Essentially, in Phase 5 you will ask if you are doing:

• the right things
• the right things right
• enough of the right things to make a difference in outcomes

Answering these questions usually entails monitoring your program on a continual basis and conducting one or more time-limited outcome evaluation studies.

Rigorous program monitoring and evaluation can require a lot of resources, but you can collect some data that will be useful even if your resources are limited.

In this phase you will:

• determine which program components should be monitored and/or evaluated
• decide how to gather the information
• decide how to analyze and report the data
• get IRB approval for research with human subjects if necessary

As CDC’s Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health stresses, you should pay close attention to the questions that stakeholders have when you make these choices. (See Evaluation Framework) If the data aren’t used to make improvements in the program, why spend program time and money to collect them?

The Framework lists four standards for evaluation. Evaluation activities should be:

• useful (i.e., responsive to stakeholder information needs)
• feasible given time, resources, and available expertise
• accurate enough to inform the kinds of decisions to be made
• proper/ethical