Evaluation Planning – 3.02 Evaluation Purpose
The Evaluation Purpose section of the evaluation plan provides a short description of the reason for conducting the evaluation and what the working group hopes to achieve by it. Writing the Evaluation Purpose section is an important part of any evaluation effort. It helps to define the goals and boundaries of the current evaluation effort, and can serve as a “big picture” reference point for the working group as they work through the details of developing an evaluation methodology.
The Evaluation Purpose section appears at the beginning of the evaluation plan document and should describe what is and what is not being evaluated and the overall goal or purpose of the evaluation. You might even think of it as a kind of “mission statement” for the evaluation (rather than for the program). It sets boundaries by identifying the program elements being considered for the evaluation, which goals or objectives are of most interest, and what the intended uses of the evaluation results are. As the working group completes other steps in the Protocol and makes decisions about aspects of the evaluation strategies, the Purpose section should be revised or updated to include a brief description of the methodology choices that have been made and the reasoning behind these decisions.
Since one of the major functions of the Evaluation Purpose section is to provide the overall rationale to guide the specific detailing of the evaluation, the Purpose Statement will tend to vary systematically with the program lifecycle. For instance, in an early phase evaluation the major purpose might be to provide a thorough description of the process of delivering the program or of its implementation so that the program might be improved in subsequent iterations. A Phase II purpose might emphasize that the evaluation is conducted to assess the degree to which the program appears to be related to key outcomes of interest. In Phase III, the purpose might stress the desire for the evaluation to demonstrate the effectiveness of the program on key outcomes.
It is important to keep in mind that this section should be brief. It is a good idea to begin this stage by drafting an initial Evaluation Purpose section (recognizing that it will be incomplete at this point in the process). As you complete each of the subsequent steps in Stage 3, revisit the evaluation purpose statement and add to and revise the statement.