Evaluation toolkit guide

Introduction and acknowledgements

This guide to evaluation is designed to be used in its entirety or in bite size pieces. The reader can read the document to gain a step-by-step guide to the process of evaluation, or they can choose to solely focus upon factsheets, overviews or examples within the appendices.

The guide sits within a suite of refreshed resources, including the National Principles for Public Engagement in Wales; developed collaboratively between public and third sector agencies, led by WCVA. The 10 National Principles for Public Engagement are a good practice guide to enable effective, ethical and meaningful engagement with the public and people that use services. They are straightforward standards to be used by professionals and practitioners in a range of settings, including but not limited to, government officials, policy makers, public administrators, bodies delivering services and engagement practitioners.

This evaluation guide provides straightforward information to enable practitioners within the public and voluntary sectors in Wales to evaluate their work and it sits alongside the Evaluating Engagement toolkit. The toolkit provides straightforward specific guidance about how to evaluate engagement activities whilst this guide focuses upon all aspects or evaluation work.

Online searches for ‘evaluation techniques will uncover a baffling array of frameworks, tools and instructions that can seem complex. Additionally, when looking for guidance on evaluation, it can be hard to find information that is not attached to a particular method, tool, change theory or aimed at a specific sector.

Evaluation should involve communities that have participated within projects or activities, but how it does this will vary according to the work at hand, the opportunities within the work and restrictions and limitations of the project being evaluated.

Acknowledgements

This guide was funded by WLGA and managed by WCVA who commissioned C.A.R.P. Collaborations and Alain Thomas Consultancy to develop it. We are grateful to the practitioners who responded to the draft document by email, the Co-Pro Lab Wales for hosting an online conversation with practitioners regarding the purpose and format of the guide and to those organisations and individuals who were able to offer examples of their evaluation work.