2. Whether a problem or need exists and describing that problem.
Making recommendations for ways to reduce the problem
Ex. The potential effectiveness of various interventions.
Needs Assessment
Questions are concerned with establishing
3. The concept of ‘needs’ is defined as the difference, or gap,
between what is and what should be
(or what is reasonably possible).
WHAT IS---------------------(GAP)------------WHAT SHOULD BE
(----------NEED-----------)
When do you do needs assessments?
When you want to find out what needs
to be done in order to reach the desired
state/performance. It is recommended
that country agents and program teams
conduct a formal needs assessment
every three to four years.
4. What is the difference between a
needs assessment and an evaluation?
Sometimes evaluation is confused with needs assessment or the two
terms are used interchangeably. A needs assessment will show us what it
is we should be doing in the first place, while an evaluation will tell us how
well we are doing in an ongoing operation.
ASSESSMENT EVALUATION
5. Outcome Evaluation
The type of evaluation most commonly
requested by foundation is called
outcome evaluation. Outcome
evaluations assess the effectiveness of
a program in producing change.
Outcome evaluations focus on
difficult questions that ask what
happened to program participants
and how much of a difference the
program made for them.
6. Questions you may have when implementing
a needs assessment.
How do I create interview questions?
How do I create focus group questions?
How do I conduct focus groups?
How do I create a survey? (online or written)
How do I distribute a survey? (online or
written)
What do I do (analysis techniques) with the
data from interview, focus groups, survey,
etc?
What steps are involved in conducting an ob
servation?
7. Outcome evaluations assess the effectiveness
of a program in producing change.
Impact or outcome evaluations are undertaken when it is important to
know whether and how well the objectives of a project or program were
met.
For example, outcome questions for a smoking cessation program
might include:
Did the program succeed in helping people to stop smoking?
Was the program more successful with certain groups of people
than with others?
What aspects of the program did participants find gave the greatest
benefit?
8. For example, process evaluation questions
might include:
What specific interventions were put into place by the program in
order to fight the problem being tackled? Di d the interventions
work or not – and how and why?
What were the kinds of problems encountered in delivering the
program – were there enough resources from the beginning to do it
well? Was it well managed? Were staff trained or educated to the
right level of the program design? It there skill at facilitating the
program processes from beginning to end? Was there adequate
support to the program?
9. Process evaluation
Process evaluation allows a nonprofit to look at how it develops itself, its
structures, its supporting programs like communications and marketing ,
even fund development in order to get to the outcomes everyone wants it
to achieve.
In other words, process evaluations document the process of a program’s
implementation. Process evaluations help stakeholders see how a
program outcome or impact was achieved. The focus of a process
evaluation is on the types and quantities of services delivered, the
beneficiaries of those services, the resources used to deliver the services, the
practical problems encountered, and the ways such problems were
solved.
Taking process evaluation a step further, it can also look at the processes of program,
management and infrastructure together that is the capacity of an organization to
deliver on its promised outcomes.
10. Why process evaluation if important?
Information from process evaluations is useful for understanding
how program impact and outcome were achieved and for
program replication. Looking at outcomes –without analyzing how
they were achieved – fails to account for the human capital
(over-worked staff) involved in getting to good outcomes and the
true costs of the program.
