Types of Evaluations

The following are typical types of evaluations Eurasia Foundation Network utilizes to bolster our understanding of program areas and to assess both the implementation and impact of programs. 
 

Needs Assessment is performed prior to project design in order to determine the demands and gaps in infrastructure and services that can be met through program activity. It identifies the appropriate strategies required to address these needs for purposes of program development and implementation. This leads to the establishment of goals, objectives, program activities, program structure and the resources needed to adequately meet these goals.
 

Baseline Evaluation is conducted prior to program activities and documents population, conditions, events and other data sets that may be affected during the course of the program. Through the gathering of this information, the evaluator is able to compare data at the close of program activities in order to gauge the impact the activities had upon the particular population or data set. 
 

Formative Evaluation is a series of data collection activities and analyses that occur over the course of the program in order to examine its efficacy. The goal of this is to improve the projects ability to fulfill its goal by examining the delivery of the program, quality of its implementation and by assessing the organizational context, personnel, procedures and inputs. Included in formative evaluation are:

• Needs Assessment determines who needs the program, how great the need is and how to meet the need
• Evaluability Assessment determines whether an evaluation is feasible and how stakeholders can shape its usefulness
• Structured Conceptualization helps stakeholders define the program, target population/problem and the possible outcomes
• Implementation Evaluation monitors the fidelity of the program to its stated goals
• Process Evaluation investigates the delivery of the program, including alternative delivery procedures

Process Evaluation is conducted during the course of project implementation and determines whether the project is running (1) effectively and (2) as planned. A benefit of this type of evaluation is that it improves understanding of how the program works and how it produces its results. By examining the extent to which the program adheres to the detailed activities, it attempts to show how well the program is running and whether it is doing so on course.

Program Monitoring/Implementation Evaluation is the collection of data and monitoring of program activities conducted during the course of program implementation. Through constant monitoring, program staff are able to continually improve program activities as they occur, while simultaneously measuring the degree to which a program achieves its goals. This is the most common and practiced form of evaluation.

Summative Evaluation occurs either at the close of a program or at appropriate breakpoints in multi-year projects, with the goal of assessing how well a program achieved its goals and the effects the program had upon the targeted issues. Through statistics, it quantifies the impact of the programmatic activities by describing changes subsequent to program delivery and assessing whether these shifts can be attributed to the program. Factors measured can include knowledge shifts, increase in discussion and changes in attitude. Forms of summative evaluation include:

• Outcome Evaluations examines whether the program had demonstrable effects on specifically defined target outcomes

• Impact Evaluation is defined below 

• Cost Effectiveness/Cost-Benefit Analysis examines the efficiency of the program by standardizing the outcomes, typically in terms of monetary values

• Secondary Analysis re-examines existing data to either address new questions not addressed previously or to examine the data with new methods

• Meta Evaluation is defined below

Impact Evaluation occurs only after program activities have run for long enough for significant data collection and for the program to have grown to a statistically relevant size. In practice, impact evaluations are preceded by an implementation evaluation to ensure that relevant programmatic activity is occurring. It analyzes the impact of the program to measure the degree to which the program has met its goals so that lessons learned can be incorporated into future programs. It reviews data collected during program activities and compares it to baseline data in order to look for long-term and unintended effects. This is also useful when several parallel programs run in unison.

Case-studies is the collection and presentation of detailed information about a particular grant or small group of grants, often including accounts by the individuals involved in the study. This qualitative study looks at a grant or small pool of grants in order to draw conclusions about it in its specific context. It seeks not to detail universal effects or cause-effect relationships, but rather to explore and describe.
 

Cluster Evaluation is conducted to assess several projects as a whole. Rather than examining each project, the overall impact of the entire initiative is studied to assess the clusters progress, as well as to identify best local practices and effective techniques. A variety of data collection methods and information sources are employed, typically gathered by project personnel at the request of the evaluator after the evaluation has been designed.

Meta-evaluation is the evaluation of evaluations. It is essential that in order for evaluations to be of use, that they be unbiased, accurate and of a high quality. The integration of outcome estimates from multiple sources helps the Foundation to arrive at an objective and useful evaluation of its procedures and programs.