Inventory structure

In the first part of section I, the documents listed provide insight into the theory, trends, and issues of program evaluation that will help you lay the groundwork, avoid pitfalls, and prepare for any obstacles that may be present. The second set of documents in section I contains guides that provide the overall picture of program evaluation, frameworks. These will walk you through the ABCs of program evaluation and provide examples of each step as well as sample tools for whatever type of evaluation you are conducting. For many of you, these guides may be all you need. For those with some background or experience with program evaluation, you may only need to turn to parts of these guides that help fill in any gaps in knowledge.

The rest of section I is organized by categories of evaluation topics: types of evaluation; evaluation methods and designs; data collection and measurement; analysis techniques; and use and dissemination of evaluation and programmatic research findings. You can go directly to the category that interests you and find the resources you need. But you should keep in mind that the general overview guidebooks have excellent information on each of these categories and may provide exactly what you are looking for.

Section II covers additional documents that a program manager may find helpful in putting together their evaluations. These documents supplement those described in section I, and program managers will benefit from reviewing all pertinent documents in the section for all users. Program managers will need to be aware of aspects of program evaluation that they may have manage, rather than implement. Your depth of understanding will vary by the degree to which you are involved and the degree to which your agency can provide the resources to conduct evaluations. While you may not be required to conduct outcome and impact levels of evaluations, you can benefit by understanding the approaches and the results of these kinds of evaluations.

Section III provides additional resources for those who work as evaluation specialists for CBOs. If you do, documents in section I and those found in section III will give you the tools you need to go beyond the reporting of process data. You will be able to start answering questions about the effect that your programs are having on the community you serve: what is changing and to what degree is it changing? Still, some levels of evaluation may be beyond your scope. Though it may not be reasonable to think that you can evaluate the “impact” of your program on HIV rates in the larger community, you may find yourself working to answer these questions in collaboration with evaluation specialists, researchers, or government officials. To that end, you will need to understand the procedures for all sorts of evaluation methods.

Section IV is focused on the staff of international agencies and large NGOs. Again, you will find documents and guides that focus on the levels and types of evaluations you need to conduct or support CBOs to carry out. Quite often, international agencies and NGOs are providing funds and technical support to community-based agencies to do their work. In program evaluation, that means that you will need to understand and be ready to implement all aspects of evaluations. You must possess the most comprehensive knowledge of all evaluation specialists, and you will need to help with process evaluations, outcome evaluations for specific agencies, outcome and impact evaluations for your service areas, operations research to identify what works and what doesn’t work, community needs assessments, agency capacity assessments, and the list goes on. If you work in one of these agencies, you will want to review many of the documents in section I before turning to section IV.

Section V is for researchers. While many have gained this title through formal education and training, a few have become researchers by accumulating experience in the field. The documents in this section provide you HIV- and reproductive health-specific examples, methods, questionnaires, and so on. You will have at your fingertips methods and tools that have already been tried out in the field and therefore will shorten the length of time you need to develop your own methods. You will also be in a much better place to synchronize what you are doing with work that has already been done, enhancing the generalizability of your findings and improving the chances that your work will be useful and used.

Section VI, the final section, focuses on the needs of governments. Much of its material should already be in the hands of governmental officials, but sometimes it cannot be located. In addition to the staff of various governments, these materials may be very useful to CBOs, international agencies, and researchers. Users will become more aware of the needs of governments and may be better able to assist in the collection and reporting of the data and information that governments are required to collect and report on. This section, therefore, should not be overlooked by any of the users of this inventory.

At the beginning of each part within each section of the inventory, readers will find tables that include the documents and resources summarized in that part. Each table has the name of the document and provides a quick-overview glimpse of the various issues that that document addresses. These tables are intended to give the reader a quick look at what kinds of issues the documents deal with so that the reader can easily move to the documents that contain the most relevant information for their work.

This inventory is expected to be a fluid manual that will change and grow over time. It should be updated as new materials are made available and new approaches are worked out. The authors encourage each reader to contact Family Health International with materials that you have and use that you have found particularly helpful. We will be periodically updating this inventory, and your input will be greatly appreciated.