SCIE Practice guide 11: The participation of adult service users, including older people, in developing social care
Review - Evaluation checklist
There are many different models of evaluation. However, in the context of evaluating participation, they would usually include the following:
- Who are the actual or potential service users served by the (participation strategy)?
- What resources are available to create, maintain, and help it?
- On what basis have you determined whether the strategy is of high quality or value? Where will you get the criteria and how will you determine 'how good is good?’
- How good, valuable or efficient is the design and delivery of the strategy (process evaluation)?
- How good or valuable are the impacts on service users or other stakeholders (outcome evaluation)?
- How costly is it to service users, staff and so on compared with alternative approaches (cost effectiveness)?
- What
elements could be used in other settings (exportability)?
(Davidson, 2005, p86)
Who should undertake the evaluation?
External evaluators are thought to offer greater independence and may have greater expertise but there may be issues of ownership in terms of implementing their findings.
Internal evaluators are part of the organisation that is being evaluated. They have insider knowledge and are more likely to be in a position to implement their findings but they may be seen as more subjective. (Patton, 2001).
