Meeting the Challenge of Comparability

Public engagement initiatives vary in size, scope, time frame and purpose, from projects with tens of thousands of participants around the world to panels involving 10 citizens from across town. The objectives may be to effect a change, to do things better, to foster involvement, to increase knowledge and/or to build common ground.

Whatever the intent, the ultimate goal is to make a difference. The challenge lies in measuring this difference. What have we accomplished? What difference has the engagement initiative made? Is one kind of engagement better than another to achieve certain goals? In the public engagement field, sometimes a lack of comparable data makes it difficult to answer these questions. For example, a group might be doing a citizens’ panel in Edmonton to advise city council on policy. It has chosen one set of criteria for evaluation. But another group doing a citizens’ panel in Guelph might have a different set and it becomes difficult to compare the success and achievements of the two panels (even allowing for the importance context can play).

The ‘Big 3’ Types of Evaluation

Evaluations are not one-size-fits-all. The appropriate type of evaluation depends largely on the purpose of the evaluation.

A formative evaluation focuses on ways of improving and enhancing programs. They are often done through a quality-improvement lens, and may be process-oriented or impact/outcome-oriented.

Formative evaluation can be done at any stage of a program. It can take place as the activity unfolds and provide an opportunity to take corrective action in real time to improve outcomes.  It can also include a phase completed at the end of the project to help assess and document lessons learned for next time.

A summative evaluation occurs at the end of a process and focuses on outcomes – e.g., did we achieve what we had intended?  Such an evaluation judges the overall effectiveness of a program. It often used to make decisions about continuing or terminating a program or project.

Why We Evaluate Engagement Initiatives

We evaluate aspects of our life and work every day: we might start a new fitness routine and check out our progress in six weeks, or switch to a different software program and then evaluate how effective it is, or where we are with it. We evaluate the minor and the major to answer a simple question: Did it work? Then we ask more complex questions: If it did, what made it work? If it did not, what prevented us from achieving the desired outcome? In the field of public engagement, evaluations can be a powerful tool for learning and improvement.

Pioneering New Approaches To Address Youth Homelessness

How can developmental evaluation help communities take action to address a complex problem such as youth homelessness?

The Problem: Youth Homelessness

Youth homelessness is a significant national problem in Canada. Approximately 235,000 individuals, youth and families experience homelessness per year. Of these, approximately 20% are youth aged 16-24.

Youth homelessness is a largely hidden problem in most communities. Most youth experiencing homelessness do not wind up “sleeping rough” on the street, but spend nights “couch surfing” wherever they can.

What We Learned: 5 Lessons For Ending Youth Homelessness

Communities across the country are taking part in an exciting new initiative that is designed to help end youth homelessness. They have been embarking on the process of developing coalitions, researching the issue and starting dialogues in order to develop solutions and to generate community momentum around this issue.

The Mobilizing Local Capacity (MLC) initiative, started by Eva’s Initiatives in Toronto (and funded by the Catherine Donnelly Foundation) was started about two years ago to catalyze action around this issue and to help communities develop broad strategies to deal with youth homelessness. Communities from across Canada applied to participate and, so far, six communities have been selected.

Using Social Movements to Support Culture Change – the Case of Health Promoting Schools

Developmental evaluation is a very useful tool in helping organizations to understand complex social issues. It was used to evaluate and inform the approach for the Health Promoting Schools movement across Canada.

What is Health Promoting Schools?

Obesity and overweight rates among children and youth are a major public health concern today. Schools are ideally placed to be organizations that promote healthy lifestyles for children and youth. Kids attend school 5 days a week, 7 hours a day, for 10 months a year from the time they are 4 years old until they reach the age of 17 or 18. All this time covers an extremely important developmental period in their lives. Yet most schools view health promotion as something that only happens in Phys Ed or Health class – perhaps a couple of hours a week at most.

Watershed Citizens’ Dialogue 2014: Alberta Citizen Deliberation on Climate Change and Water

This reflection was written by ABCD Researcher Dr. Gwendolyn Blue of the University of Calgary and Jacquie Dale.

Please find the original post on the Alberta Climate Dialogue blog.

The Nuts and Bolts of Good Governance

Many people involved in the non-profit sector are passionate about providing services and enhancing the lives of people they know or people they may have never even met. Whether as staff or volunteers, they get involved in an organization to “do good,” to make positive change in the community. Boards contribute to the mission of an organization by governing it. Carter McNamara, an American management consultant and founder of the Free Management Library who writes extensively about non-profit boards says, “The phrase ‘governance’ often refers to the Board’s activities to oversee the purpose, plans and policies of the overall organization, such as establishing those overall plans and policies, supervision of the CEO, ensuring sufficient resources for the organization, ensuring compliance to rules and regulations, representing the organization to external stakeholders, etc.”

Sharing Knowledge – Protect the Welfare of Community-Based Programs

I’ve worked with a lot of organizations and networks developing community-based programs that seek to address complex issues such as homelessness and youth involvement in gangs. There’s no shortage of knowledge among those working on these issues on the frontlines. What’s often lacking, however, is the translation of this day-to-day expertise into useable knowledge. The professionals work in silos, rather than contributing to a collective body of knowledge that could move the field forward as a whole.

Disability: Who’s Responsible for Ensuring a Level Playing Field in the Workplace?

Perhaps many of us don’t think about how easy it is to push open the correct door to the washroom in a crowded building. The truth is, for those who are not physically, visually or hearing impaired, the world around us makes sense. The recent HRSDC conference on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities shed light on just how challenging the world can be for the millions of people living with a disability and the importance of creating environments to accommodate them. Is it a societal issue and whose responsibility is it to ensure a level playing field?