PPA 502 – Lecture 9b

1. PPA 502 – Lecture 9b How to Communicate Evaluation Findings

2. 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.

3. 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).

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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?

7. Forms of Communicating Evaluation Findings.

8. 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.

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

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

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