2.2.4 Identify Evaluation Questions

Equipped with inputs from your stakeholders, a refined program description and/or revised logic model and a clear understanding of the activities, outputs and outcomes of your work, you are now in Step 2, defining your evaluation questions.

Evaluation questions allow you to simply state what you would like to learn from your evaluation. These are broad questions that will also help determine the type of evaluation and design you need to conduct your evaluation. See Worksheet #3 to help guide you in defining your evaluation questions.

Some of the benefits of defining your evaluation questions include:

• Provide clarity among stakeholders about what you want your evaluation to achieve
• Helps identify what data to focus on collecting to maximize your time and resources
• Keeps your activities relevant and focused
• Helps ensure that the results of your evaluation will be usable
• Enables you to clearly determine whether your evaluation was successful

As you work to define your evaluation questions it would be useful to consider the environment in which your evaluation will take place. You may have already considered some of these factors while assessing your readiness to conduct the evaluation. In addition, here are some useful high-level points to explore at this time:

• Who is the evaluation for?
• Have you done evaluation of the program in the past? If so, what type of evaluation have you done? Or is evaluation a new activity for you?
• Is there evidence of data being collected and evaluation data being used?
• Who is the audience for the results? Who needs the results or evaluation findings?
• Are there any expectations or requirements from your funding partners?
• How will results be used and by whom?

Defining your evaluation questions will also help you to determine the type of evaluation you should be doing.  If your program is new and you have not conducted evaluation, you need to start with process evaluation. If you have conducted some process evaluation, it is important to ensure that those process evaluations are robust before considering outcome evaluation.

Additional Resources:

• Developing Measureable Program Goals and Objectives
• Key Evaluation Questions, Learning for Sustainability
• Community Tool Box: University of Kansas