4. Gather credible evidence, 5. Justify conclusions, 6. Ensure use and share lessons learned.
Step 1: Engaging Stakeholders -The evaluation cycle begins by engaging stakeholders (i.e., the persons or organizations having an investment in what will be learned from an evaluation and what will be done with the knowledge). Public health work involves partnerships; therefore, any assessment of a public health program requires considering the value systems of the partners. Stakeholders must be engaged in the inquiry to ensure that their perspectives are understood. When stakeholders are not engaged, an evaluation might not address important elements of a program’s objectives, operations, and outcomes. Therefore, evaluation findings might be ignored, criticized, or resisted because the evaluation did not address the stakeholders’ concerns or values. After becoming involved, stakeholders help to execute the other steps. Identifying and engaging the following three principal groups of stakeholders are critical: ● those involved in program operations (e.g., sponsors, collaborators, coalition partners, funding officials, administrators, managers, and staff); ● those served or affected by the program (e.g., clients, family members, neighborhood organizations, academic institutions, elected officials, advocacy groups, professional associations, skeptics, opponents, and staff of related or competing organizations); and ● primary users of the evaluation. Step 2: Describing the Program- Program descriptions convey the mission and objectives of the program being evaluated. Descriptions should be sufficiently detailed to ensure understanding of program goals and strategies. The description should discuss the program’s capacity to effect change, its stage of development, and how it fits into the larger organization and community. Program descriptions set the frame of reference for all subsequent decisions in an evaluation. The description enables comparisons with similar programs and facilitates attempts to connect program components to their effects. Moreover, stakeholders might have differing ideas regarding program goals and purposes. Evaluations done without agreement on the program definition are likely to be of limited use. Sometimes, negotiating with stakeholders to formulate a clear and logical description will bring benefits before data are available to evaluate program effectiveness. Aspects to include in a program des cription are need, expected effects, activities, resources, stage of development, context, and logic model. Step 3: Focusing the Evaluation Design- The evaluation must be focused to assess the issues of greatest concern to stakeholders while using time and resources as efficiently as possible. Not all design options are equally well-suited to meeting the information needs of stakeholders. After data collection begins, changing procedures might be difficult or impossible, even if better methods become obvious. A thorough plan anticipates intended uses and creates an evaluation strategy with the greatest chance of being useful, feasible, ethical, and accurate. Among the items to consider
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