Program Planning, Theory, and Practice: SBS 5002

Evaluation Types

Evaluations can take many forms and occur at different stage of a program, including: 

Before the program starts or at the start

1. Needs assessment – Who needs what services or support? 
2. Targeting assessment – Is the program reaching who it intended to reach? 

Implementation

1. Process Assessment/Evaluation - Is the program being implemented as it was planned? 
2. Monitoring – Ongoing collection of data to track performance, process and/or outputs 
3. Performance Measurement   
4. Fiscal accountability – Are the implementing organizations stewarding the money properly? 

Mid-term/End of project

1. Impact evaluation – Did the program “work”? Did it have its intended impact? 
2. Cost-benefit, cost effectiveness – Was the program worth it? 

How it was done/Equity

1. Participatory evaluation 
2. Advocacy evaluation    

Learn more at Sage Research Methods Online

Interventions

Prevention Institute: Tools

In medical and nursing literature, a level of evidence may be assigned to a research article based on the quality of their methodological design, validity, and applicability to patient care.

Correlational studies might fall into Level IV or V on this chart, whereas intervention studies might fall into Levels II, III, or IV.

Adapted from Melnyk, B. M., & In Fineout-Overholt, E. (2011). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practice.

Intervention studies are experimental studies that test the effectiveness of a preventative or therapeutic measure.

Searching for intervention studies: Look for Methodology or Publication Types that use terms like clinical trial, randomised-controlled (RCT), experimental, quasi-experimental, treatment outcome study

Correlational studies are observational studies that look at the relationships between two or more variables that are not controlled by the researcher. These studies can reveal if a relationship exists between variables, but are limited because they do not prove causation. They are often used for gathering information about a topic or in situations where performing an experiment is not possible.

Searching for correlational studies: Look for Methodology or Publication Types that use terms like cohort, case-control, descriptive, or observational, longitudinal study.