Monitoring and Evaluation Guidance

How will you determine if your program is working? This section will provide you with the tools to monitor and evaluate your activities.

Monitoring and evaluating your activities

The processes of monitoring and evaluation use carefully planned and well-thought-out methods to measure the success of an activity in meeting its goals. They are an important part of the project management process, because they provide:

  • evidence of what is working
  • guidance on what could be done better, which can be used to improve your activity’s performance (progress towards and achievement of results)
  • a check on whether you are meeting your activity’s aims
  • feedback to everyone involved in the activity, including community members and partner organisations
  • compliance with funding body reporting requirements.

Key terms used when talking about monitoring and evaluation are shown in Box 1.

Box 1: Monitoring and evaluation key terms

  • performance: what the activity is achieving (observable results)
  • measurement: how we determine the impact of a activity or program on intended outcomes (e.g. using a questionnaire to find out how many people have smoke-free homes or conducting interviews to find out how people keep their homes smoke-free)
  • indicator: measures that show the extent of progress toward outcomes, especially differences in the lives of the people the activity is working for
  • data collection: process used to gather evidence (e.g. giving smoke-free event participants a questionnaire survey)
  • output: what the activity is producing with its resources (e.g. a specific product or service)
  • outcome: results and impacts of the activity (e.g. a percentage reduction in smoking, a change in behaviour).

Monitoring and evaluation are related processes, but each has a different focus:

  • monitoring provides the organisation and key stakeholders with early indicators of progress, and usually focuses on project outputs (the activities that a project has delivered)
  • evaluation systematically assesses progress towards achieving outcomes.

Table 1 provides examples of different outputs and outcomes for the TIS program. Monitoring outputs relies on describing and counting project activities and the number of people who come to events. In the past TIS reporting focused only on what is included in the outputs column – ‘what we do and who we reach.’ Now, however, you are being asked to think more about ‘what difference do our activities make?’ This is a question about your activity outcomes.

Table 1: Examples of outputs and outcomes for TIS

Outputs Outcomes

Smoke-free workshops delivered to 100 workers in 10 community organisations

85 workers have increased knowledge of benefits of smoke-free workplace and increased commitment to being smoke-free at work

 8 Organisations are smoke-free

Social media campaign (call to action – take the ‘we can be smokefree’ pledge).

45 families took the pledge

Follow up survey showed that this has potential to reach over 500 individuals living in these homes

You can find out more about the ‘how, who and what’ of TIS activities evaluation in Box 2.

Box 2: The how, who and what of evaluation

How to plan an evaluation?

It’s a good idea to work out an evaluation plan for your activities, so you can keep track of the evaluation. In your plan consider the following points:

  • What are the reasons for evaluating your activities?
  • Who will read or listen to your evaluation?
  • What sort of resources will you need for your evaluation?
  • What are your evaluation questions?

Who will do the evaluation?

Work out who will be responsible for organising and writing up the evaluation.

Who should participate in an evaluation?

Good evaluations involve those who are interested and affected by your activities. Involving people from the earliest stages of the activity’s development to the final evaluation can encourage local communities to set up, control and own an activity. Putting together a working group (a group appointed to study or report on a particular question) of community members also helps the evaluation process. A working group brings the values and shared interests of the community into the process. Often they are also the ones who are best placed to talk about the needs of their community.

What should you evaluate?

What aspect of the activities do you want to evaluate? For example, do you want  to know if the activities’ objectives were met? Or do you want to know what people liked about the activities? There are lots of evaluation questions you could use. Examples of the sorts of questions you might use to answer different questions are provided in the

.

What sort of resources will you need for your evaluation?

Be realistic about what resources are available to undertake the evaluation. This includes funding, time, staff, salaries, material, equipment and operating costs.

Source: material adapted from Kruger K, McMillan N, Russ P and Smallwood H (2007) Talkin’ up good air: Australian Indigenous tobacco control resource kit. Melbourne: Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Tobacco Control

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Or for a more in-depth general discussion of behaviour change evaluation and definitions of some other terms used in monitoring and evaluation, you might find the Evaluation toolbox useful.

When should I think about monitoring and evaluation?

Monitoring and evaluation should be built into your activities from the start. It is also a requirement of TIS program funding to measure your outcomes every six months for Indigenous Australians’ Health Programme (IAHP) grant agreement progress reporting. The

developed by HealthInfoNet on behalf of the Australian Government (2012), describes a simple six step process to building evaluation into an activities plan:

    1. Plan the activities – what do you want to achieve, who do you want to involve, what will you do and how will you do it?
    2. Plan an evaluation – decide and consult about what you will measure, identify key questions, identify local sensitivities, identify good processes, and allocate necessary resources.
    3. Design the evaluation – decide on the methods you will use to collect the information you want, such as counting how many attend a smoke-free community event (output), giving out a short questionnaire asking what people thought of the event, and whether those who attended learnt anything about smoking harms, benefits of quitting, or quit support available (outcomes).
    4. Collect and record your information – do this systemically to get a true picture of what your activity is achieving.
    5. Analyse your information – see if the program is achieving what you intended, or whether are are any unexpected outcomes, identify the lessons to learn. Decide if you need to make any changes to your activities to keep on track.
    6. Provide feedback on your findings – let the people involved in the activity such as the community, your organisation and the participants know about what was achieved.

Examples of ways to present your data using charts and dashboards for good visual impacts can be found in this monitoring and evaluation resource or on the Resources to monitor and evaluate your program page here.

Figure 1: Keeping your activities on track

 

 

Figure 1 shows how monitoring and evaluation forms a central part of your activities. You can use the information that you collect to make sure activities are on track and that you are achieving the outcomes you intended, adapting and improving your activities as you go. This process of using monitoring and evaluation data to improve your activities as you go is known as continual quality improvement (CQI). For support in undertaking CQI, you can download Reach, implementation, satisfaction and effectiveness (RISE): a tool for supporting CQI for TIS. More tips for how to use monitoring and evaluation data are provided in Box 3.

 

 

 

 

Box 3: Using monitoring and evaluation data

Activities do not always run as planned or as expected, and are a learning experience for all those involved. Monitoring your activities and evaluating outcomes will help you keep track of progress, identify important changes and make it easier to see what you have achieved.  Answering the following questions may help keep your activities on track:

  • What do the early results mean in terms of what you are trying to achieve?
  • Should you be changing the way you are doing things?
  • How do you continue the positive changes you are achieving?
  • Are you doing things in the best possible way?
  • Are you talking to the right people about the progress of your activities?
  • Are you making progress, making a difference?

Source: adapted from Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet (2012) [2]


[1] This material is used with permission from the Commonwealth of Australia. Talkin’ up good air contains materials that were contributed by Quit Victoria (Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria), Apunipima Cape York Health Council, National Heart Foundation of Australia (NSW Division), Council of Social Services of New South Wales and Queensland Health and which remain their property.

[2] Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet (2012) Healthy, Deadly and Strong: Healthy Lifestyle Worker Toolkit. Perth, WA: Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet