Evaluability assessment: An application in a complex community improvement setting.

Area of Science:

• Public Administration
• Program Evaluation
• Community Development

Background:

• Effective evaluation is crucial for policy and intervention success, resource optimization, and understanding failures.
• Evaluability assessment (EA) is a collaborative process to design evaluations that yield relevant and robust evidence.
• Applying EA in complex, area-based community improvement initiatives presents a novel context.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report on the context, process, and participant evidence from an EA facilitated with public service workers.
• To demonstrate how EA can be utilized in a novel setting for program implementation.
• To explore the co-production of evaluation frameworks by practitioners.

Main Methods:

• Facilitated evaluability assessment (EA) with public service workers.
• Collaborative identification of evaluation activities.
• Co-production of a theory of change for a community improvement initiative.

Main Results:

• Practitioners at all levels identified key activities for evaluation.
• A theory of change was co-produced, reflecting implementation realities.
• EA facilitated the development of relevant evaluation recommendations aligned with available data and resources.

Conclusions:

• EA is a valuable tool for enhancing the relevance and robustness of evaluations in complex public service initiatives.
• The collaborative nature of EA empowers practitioners to shape evaluation design and theory of change.
• EA can lead to more practical and resource-aware evaluation recommendations, improving decision-making and program implementation.