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Creative Evaluation Strategies

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There are many many creative ways of doing evaluation. We typically go to the pen and paper, but in actual fact there is storytelling, there’s use of music, there’s use of pictures, there’s graffiti boards. And some of these lend themselves for process evaluation. But don’t neglect them or dismiss them as potential ways also of getting outcome evaluation or impact evaluation. It does depend upon the objective, though. So the objective is going to give you some indication of how you might evaluate. So these are just some creative ways of doing things. You can do storytelling, you can do music and theatre, and so on. Don’t dismiss them as options. There are skill sets, though required.
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So for example, these are pictures that I selected from my own personal picture group. The one in the middle is my puppy. Not a puppy any longer, but my puppy. But you might think, well what has this got to do with evaluation? In actual fact, I’ve found that often by using pictures and asking participants to talk to a particular image, will loosen them up and enable them to start to talk about something which they might not have talked about unless they’d had this image next to them. For example, if I asked you to think about how do you feel about the training process we have just been going through? You could select an image and then talked to that.
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Hopefully you might say, “Oh, it’s made me feel enlightened and brighter, such as that image of the Sun that’s there.” . But this is just one example, and you can actually purchase photo language sets. They can be used as part of an ongoing evaluation process. We’ve used graffiti boards and graffiti closets, particularly around process evaluation measures when we’re working with young people. It’s enabled us to keep track of how they’re feeling during an ongoing longer term training program. It means that we stay engaged with them and they’re able to ask us questions, which we might not have got them to ask us if we hadn’t set up. For example, the graffiti closet.
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If literacy is an issue, consider the use of symbols and graphics. These are all really creative ways in which you can evaluate a program. You can even just use a person’s outline of the hand and ask questions around them. The important bit here is to match evaluation with the objectives. For some evaluation techniques, you are going to need survey responses. You’re going to need people to respond to a questionnaire. Perhaps you’ve got some preexisting instrument that measures depression that will need to be administered. But don’t limit your evaluation choices, just the one type of approach. Evaluation, just like planning and just like implementation, needs to be creative. Thank you.

There are many creative ways of doing an evaluation. Dr. Bruce will explain creative evaluation strategies. He encourages us to consider all of the possible options.

  • Film/digital storytelling
  • Theatre/drama
  • Music
  • Artwork
  • Graffiti
  • Sculpture
  • Photo language
  • Games/knowledge quizzes
  • Stories (Most significant change technique, yarning)
  • Action narratives
  • Technology (apps, smartphones, social networking media)

He will use examples of graffiti and a project plan table to explain. 1dia4 The project plan is also a good example when you do the evaluation.

Have you ever done these evaluation methods before? Do you think these approaches useful? Which method or example you found appealing? If you are willing to share, please reply in the comment section below.

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