|
Session Title: Living Into Developmental Evaluation: Reflections on Changing Practice
|
|
Panel Session 555 to be held in California C on Friday, Nov 4, 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM
|
|
Sponsored by the Non-profit and Foundations Evaluation TIG
|
| Chair(s): |
| Hallie Preskill, FSG Social Impact Consultants, hallie.preskill@fsg.org
|
| Discussant(s):
|
| Michael Patton, Utilization-Focused Evaluation, mqpatton@prodigy.net
|
| Abstract:
Within the last few years, an increasing number of evaluators, nonprofits, and funders have been experimenting with more dynamic, responsive, and emergent forms of evaluation. While some have called these new approaches "adaptive" or "real-time," perhaps the most well-known is Developmental Evaluation, conceptualized and written about by Michael Q. Patton. This approach, which is particularly well suited for evaluating social innovations, or programs/initiatives/strategies that are not well-tested and where the outcomes cannot always be pre-planned or predicted, constitutes a fundamentally different role and set of competencies for evaluators. In this session, we will explore: a) what it means to engage in a Developmental Evaluation, b) how this approach is similar and/or different from formative and summative evaluations, and c) the challenges and opportunities for Developmental Evaluation in the field. Both the evaluators' and the clients' perspectives will be presented.
|
|
Strategy, Stamina, and Synergy: Essential Elements for Engaging in Developmental Evaluations
|
| Hallie Preskill, FSG Social Impact Consultants, hallie.preskill@fsg.org
|
|
For the last two years, FSG has been working with the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation on a developmental evaluation of its Community Information Challenge project - a 5-year, $24m innovative initiative designed to foster local information news and civic engagement through digital media. In this session, we will describe how the evaluation's questions, design and data collection methods, and reporting strategies have evolved over time - how the evaluation has been responsive to emerging client interests and information needs. The presentation will include challenges to doing this kind of evaluation, and opportunities for the field. In addition, we will reflect on how this developmental evaluation has been creating actionable knowledge for both the foundation staff, as well as for external audiences, through the dissemination of multiple evaluation products. We will also provide examples of how the evaluation findings have been used to inform and refine the foundation's strategy.
|
|
|
Building Developmental Evaluation Competencies: Challenges in Adaptation and Learning
|
| Mayur Patel, Knight Foundation, patel@knightfoundation.org
|
|
In 2008, we launched the Knight Community Information Challenge to encourage community and place-based foundations to get involved in supporting news and information as a core community issue. Over the past two years, we have partnered with FSG to design an ongoing multi-year evaluation of the initiative to understand the extent to which foundations are increasingly engaging in activities that support community information and to track changes in the extent to which communities are better informed and engaged. The evaluation has involved different data collection methodologies and research outputs for multiple audiences, including our program teams, board, grantees and foundation peers. The presentation will highlight the organizational challenges involved in managing a developmental evaluation process, the internal capacities required to participate in ongoing adaptive learning, and what it takes, both on the evaluator and client side, for an external partner to be integrated into a foundation's internal work.
| |
|
Using a Developmental Evaluation Approach to Create an Evaluation Partnership for the Healthy Weight Collaborative
|
| Margaret Hargreaves, Mathematica Policy Research, mhargreaves@mathematica-mpr.com
|
| Amanda Cash, United States Department of Health and Human Services, acash@hrsa.gov
|
|
Over the last year, Mathematica Policy Research has been working with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality (NICHQ) to evaluate the Healthy Weight Collaborative (HWC), an innovative quality improvement (QI) initiative designed to spread clinical and community-based interventions that prevent and treat obesity among children and families. The HWC is adapting the Institute of Health Improvement's (IHI) Breakthrough Series healthcare QI model for use in community-based learning collaboratives. Mathematica is using a developmental evaluation approach to work closely with HRSA and NICHQ evaluation and program staff to provide ongoing evaluation support as the IHI QI model is adapted for this community-based setting. In this session, Mathematica and HRSA staff discuss the challenges and opportunities of this fascinating and rapidly evolving project and evaluation. We will provide examples of how the evaluation's interim products have been used in the adaptation process.
| |