Table of Contents
Step 1 | An Introduction to Developing a Volunteer Water Monitoring Program
Step 2 | Setting Goals and Objectives
Step 3 | Understanding Elements of Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) Protocols
Step 4 | Recruiting, Training, and Retaining Volunteers
Step 5 | Collecting Reliable Data
Step 6 | Data Collection, Analysis and Data Management
Step 7 | Evaluating the Success of Your Program
Additional Resources
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Step 7 | Evaluating the Success of Your ProgramAfter completing this section, you should be able to:
It is valuable to evaluate your program and assess and adapt activities to ensure they are as effective as possible. Evaluating the performance of your monitoring program is an important step and can determine what aspects of the program need changes or additional support. Evaluation results should guide changes to your program, and they can also be used to improve the program design and communicate the impact of the program to the public, future volunteers, program partners, and state agencies.
The results from your evaluations should guide changes to your program. Determining actual results against the original goals and objectives can determine what aspects need to be modified. For example, if the objective was to collect data at 20 sites on a monthly basis and after evaluating the data you realize on average only 15 sites were monitored, you may decide to reduce the number of sites, increase the amount of volunteers, or determine that 15 sites is adequate to meet your objectives. Another common evaluation technique is providing short surveys after training sessions; they will give you immediate feedback on a variety of topics including teaching methods, if manuals and handouts were easy to follow and whether or not your volunteers feel confident in their sampling procedures. It is a common belief that evaluations should take place at the end of a program; however evaluations are very valuable when a project is being implemented and are valuable throughout the entire life of the program. Evaluations are critical for finding out what is working and what should be modified. Integrating evaluation into a program will ensure that actions are directly influenced by up to date information. Self-Assignment: Read pages 4-6 in “Evaluating Your Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring
Program”, and reflect on the Xanadu case study. As you read through the case study, take note of when the evaluation development began and brainstorm how you could potentially implement a similar evaluation into your program strategy. What would you like to evaluate based on the program goals you developed in Step 1 of this module? Evaluation Categories
There are two categories of evaluations: formative and summative. Formative evaluations refer to evaluations which are conducted during program development and implementation. They are used to investigate how best to achieve goals and improve the implementation of your program. Formative evaluations continue throughout the life of the project and are intended to assess ongoing activities and provide information to improve the project. Generally formative evaluations are used to test out program methods and materials. Some examples of a formative evaluation include:
Evaluation Process
There are many components of evaluations which can vary greatly; some funding agencies require a certain frequency of evaluations while other may not require an evaluation at all. Nonetheless, evaluations provide valuable information and should be directly integrated into a program design. There are a number of steps in developing an evaluation. The following is a brief list of some steps to consider: Determine the purpose: Is the evaluation going to be used to teach others about your program, show measurable impacts to water quality, improve training methods, impact policy decisions, or determine if the program cost is worth the impact? Defining a purpose will result in a clear direction of the evaluation and result in information that is useful. Define what to evaluate: Items to consider might include the training sessions, materials and handouts, long-term goals of the program, water quality impact or volunteer behavior. You will need to consider if you want to evaluate specific aspect(s) or the entire program. Formal evaluations require time, money and resources and may be unnecessary, therefore it is valuable to define exactly what you want to evaluate. It may be helpful to include partners of the program in this discussion, as other agencies may be interested in your results and may have resources available to help develop an evaluation. Define evaluation questions: What topics do you want to address? For example, do you want to know more about the outcomes of the program, such as changes in volunteer behavior or benefits of the program to volunteers? Or, do you want to evaluate the program content and determine if the program is addressing community needs? The evaluation questions will be determined by the purpose of the evaluation. When designing an evaluation it is important to include program partners in the development process. It is very likely that funders, policymakers and program staff all have different questions about your volunteer monitoring program. For example, funders may be more concerned with long-term environmental impacts of the program while staff may be more interested in learning about program logistics and volunteer satisfaction. Because volunteer monitoring programs can be far reaching and involve many stakeholders it is important to address all of their concerns when developing an evaluation. Also, it is more likely that the stakeholders will accept the evaluation findings if they were included in the development stages. It’s important to know that one evaluation cannot address every question or concern; however, there are methods to prioritizing questions according to you goals and available resources. There are many considerations when developing an evaluation and this step only touches on the surface of the topic. It is highly recommended that you thoroughly investigate evaluation techniques and integrate evaluation into the program strategy. Self-Assignment: Throughout this module you have brainstormed potential partners for developing the program, your goals and objectives, volunteer recruitment and training, data collection logistics and quality control. Brainstorm one way in which you could integrate an evaluation into your program strategy. At which step in the implementation process would you want to conduct an evaluation?
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- Home
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Steps
- Step 1 | An Introduction to Developing a Volunteer Monitoring Program
- Step 2 | Setting Goals and Objectives
- Step 3 | Understanding Elements of Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) Protocols
- Step 4 | Recruiting, Training and Retaining Volunteers
- Step 5 | Collecting Reliable Data
- Step 6 | Data Collection, Analysis and Data Management
- Step 7 | Evaluating the Success of Your Program
- Acknowledgements