This policy briefing focuses on evaluability assessment, a systematic and collaborative approach to deciding whether and how an evaluation should be done. EA involves stakeholders working together to reach a consensus view of what the policy or service change is expected to achieve, what data sources are available to measure change processes and outcomes, and what is the best approach to evaluation.
Evaluability assessments – our impact
The impact of What Works Scotland on evaluation planning, in particular the increasing use of evaluability assessments.
What Works Scotland contributes to health and wellbeing evaluation support materials
What Works Scotland co-director Peter Craig has contributed to new evaluation support materials for health and wellbeing professionals.
Blog: Democratic evaluation for the 21st Century
Guest blogger Robert Picciotto explores whether the democratic evaluation model from half a century ago is still fit for purpose in April 2015. Are current democratic evaluations adapted to modern-day challenges?
Blog: In an era of killer sound-bites how can researchers and policy makers close the gap between complexity and simplicity?
Dr Claire Bynner from What Works Scotland writes about complexity and shares some of the highlights from the Social Research Association’s 2016 annual conference. She discusses how we might bridge the gap between complexity and simplicity.
Evaluation of Police and Fire Reform
Annual evaluations of the police and fire reform, which aim to assess if the aims of the reform have been met, identify lessons for future public service reform and evaluate the wider impact of the reform. The evaluations are produced by What Works Scotland, the Scottish Institute for Policing Research and ScotCen for Scottish Government.
Evaluating the impact of participatory budgeting
How What Works Scotland and Glasgow community planning partners used a collaborative action research model, to develop an evaluation approach to assess the impact of participatory budgeting activities and a PB evaluation toolkit.
Glasgow’s Participatory Budgeting Evaluation Toolkit
This toolkit was produced by practitioners in Glasgow’s Participatory Budgeting Evaluation Group to assess the impact of PB activities and develop an improvement plan. It is aimed at any organisation or community group in Glasgow leading a PB activity.
Evaluability Assessment of Thriving Places: a Report for Glasgow Community Planning Partnership
Report that describes the evaluability assessment (EA) process used by What Works Scotland to develop and recommend options to evaluate the Glasgow area-based initiative Thriving Places.
Evaluability Assessment: a systematic approach to deciding whether and how to evaluate programmes and policies
This working paper sets out the essentials of the evaluability assessment approach, which What Works Scotland has identified as one of its key approaches to improving the use of evaluation and evidence by community planning partnerships. The paper describes how evaluability assessment has been used to date, with a focus on examples relevant to Scotland, and suggests how it may be used in future.