One of our youth center’s talented staff members is considering evaluation as a career. She’s approached me a few times and asked to volunteer on evaluation projects. What type of project can you give a novice evaluator? Data analysis? Writing a report? Conducting a focus group?…
One of my roles as an internal evaluator in a large urban youth center is to teach the GED instructors, mental health counselors, and other youth workers how to think about data. “Evaluation” is a scary word. I really think internal evaluators should avoid saying…
One of my favorite programs at our youth center is an afterschool health program for high school students. The students learn about a variety of health topics, like nutrition, fitness, body systems, sexual health, etc. The students also have an opportunity to intern in local health…
A wonderful thing about program evaluation is that evaluators have the opportunity to use data to tell stories about the program. I want people to understand everything about the program, like who was served, what happened to them as a result of the program, and what roadblocks…
As an internal evaluator in a multiservice community-based youth center, one of my many roles and goals is to foster an organizational culture of learning and evaluation. What does this really mean? And how do we know whether we’ve achieved it? One of several frameworks for…