Date: Sunday, October 26, 2025
Hi, I’m Christina Holt of the University of Kansas Center for Community Health and Development and co-creator of the Community Tool Box.
As an evaluator, I support participatory research and evaluation efforts to help communities strengthen capacity for prevention. One important shift in recent years is how we think about preventing sexual violence and other forms of inter-related violence.
Over the past decade, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has encouraged a primary prevention approach—looking at ways to stop violence before it happens. Like other public health issues, this means focusing on risk and protective factors and addressing the conditions that influence whether people are more likely to experience harm or protection.
Traditionally, evaluation has focused on programs—for example, asking whether a bystander intervention training is effective. While useful, program-level evaluation alone cannot “tip the scale” for population-level change.
To understand how communities and systems are creating safer conditions, we need to take a wider lens. This includes tracking changes in risk and protective factors such as:
Because population-level outcomes take time, it’s critical to track intermediate outcomes along the way. One powerful approach is documenting community and systems changes—the new programs, policies, and practices that support prevention.
For example, in efforts to ensure safe and affordable housing (a protective factor against multiple forms of violence), intermediate outcomes might include:
It is also important to track what led to those changes—such as community actions like advocacy meetings with public officials or letters to the editor. This creates a story of how progress happens, not just what outcomes appear.
The Community Check Box Evaluation System is a KU resource used by community initiatives to capture their unique evaluation questions and track accomplishments.
Additionally, the free, online Community Tool Box has a multitude of evaluation resources that help practitioners transition from a program evaluation-focused approach to a broader, more comprehensive community-based evaluation approach.
Don’t just collect data—review it with “careholders” (community members, partners, and those most affected). Ask together:
Regular reflection promotes use of the data, accountability among partners, and even celebration of progress.
How are you supporting the documentation and evaluation of community efforts to change conditions for well-being?Do you have an example we could feature in the Community Tool Box? We’d love to hear from you at toolbox@ku.edu.
We’re looking forward to the fall and the Evaluation 2025 conference with our colleagues in the Local Arrangements Working Group (LAWG). Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to contribute to AEA365? Review the contribution guidelines and send your draft post to AEA365@eval.org. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.