Evaluation Advisory Committees – getting it right at the start December 16, 2008
Posted by Paul Duignan in : Doing evaluation more efficiently, Evaluation planning, Using the approach , trackback
Recently I attended the first meeting of an Evaluation Advisory Committee and I was reminded once again of the importance of setting up evaluations properly at the start. I have set out below the issues which need to be dealt with when such committees are set up. This list is drawn from my experience on a number of these types of committees. The issues you need to deal with include:
- Exactly who or what the Evaluation Advisory Committee is reporting to. Lines of communication need to be very clear for everyone concerned.
- How it will interact with the evaluation funder and other aspects of the evaluation, e.g. the evaluators, evaluation working groups, higher-level Evaluation Steering Committees (if the Evaluation Advisory Committee is a technical advisory committee beneath a higher-level Steering Committee).
- Exactly what are the evaluation questions being identified in the planning documentation as it exists at the time the Advisory Committee first meets. You have to be careful that the wording of the possible evaluation questions in such documentation is not so tight and proscribed that it commits the Advisory Committee to attempting to answer evaluation questions which are inappropriate, not feasible or not affordable to answer. Obviously, the more general the evaluation questions the more room there is for the Evaluation Advisory Committee to really examine the feasibility of answering different types of evaluation questions. As you will know from my earlier blogs, I am very keen on people using the discipline of clearing defining the evaluation questions they will, and will not, be answering (e.g. see the visual evaluation plan here which specifies what evaluation questions will, and will not, be answered in that case.
- Confidentiality. What has to remain confidential to the group and what does not have to.
- Publication. What are the plans for release of the evaluation report. There are circumstances in which evaluation reports are not released and there may be nothing that the Advisory Committee can do about it. In retrospect if you suspected that this might happen you may have not bothered spending your time being involved on the Advisory Committee.
- Discussions with other stakeholders about the evaluation plan. What plans are there to discuss the evaluation with other stakeholders. What stage are these plans at.
These are some of the issues which I think are important, if you there there are others, post a reply listing them.
Paul Duignan, PhD
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