Need an evaluation that improves the quality of your work? Our transdisciplinary team of social scientists, writers, and educators offers a variety of partner-centered services that can help you strengthen your practices, deepen your impacts, and more effectively engage your audiences. We specialize in evaluation that is responsive to partners’ needs, supports organizational learning and program improvement, and builds community capacities. Beyond simply assessing program outcomes, our evaluative findings seek to inform implementation and contribute to our partners’ long-term goals.
Two foundational principles inform all of our evaluative work:
- Evaluation should be utilization-focused – meaning that we invite all stakeholders (including organizational leaders and facilitators, program participants, and funders) to the table, actively encouraging their participation through a reciprocal, collaborative process of giving and receiving feedback;
- Evaluation should be undertaken within a framework of cultural competence – meaning that we strive to respect and honor the voices and perspectives of all stakeholders, working collaboratively with them to ensure that our findings align with their values, questions, and concerns.
By structuring our evaluations in accordance with these principles, our work yields contextually appropriate findings that are accessible, actionable, and empowering.
Our evaluative practice makes use of a mixed-methods model. Regardless of what we’re evaluating (programs, projects, documents, protocols, procedures, curricula, interventions, etc.), we use complementary forms of data collection and analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) to guide our work. Triangulating between different assessment tools (surveys, interviews, focus groups, pre-posts, time series, case studies, visitor intercepts, etc.) helps ensure the validity of our findings. Making use of a series of overlapping, interdependent instruments also adds nuance to our evaluative findings, helping partners identify causal relationships between activities and outcomes – and chart a clear course from knowledge to action.
Interested in hiring us? Read on to learn more about some of the specific evaluation services we offer. As practitioners of flexible, adaptive evaluation, we can tailor any of these services to meet the exact evaluative needs of your organization.
Needs Assessment
Unsure of what your audience’s key needs and wants are, or about the kinds of programs that align with their values, interests, or concerns? By conducting a needs assessment, we’ll work with you to determine the topics that are of greatest importance to those you serve, and then show you how our findings could help contribute to the design of an effective program.
Formative Evaluation
If you’re in the planning stage of an intervention, and need clarity on potential impacts, challenges, and pathways to success, a prospective evaluation could be beneficial. Working together, we’ll help you craft achievable, clearly defined program goals, create a logic model / theory of change to articulate a path from actions to outcomes, and come up with an evaluation plan that makes it possible to measure your progress and chart a course to program improvement. We’ll also ensure that your work is grounded in theory, takes advantage of contemporary thinking and best practices, and proceeds from a solid foundation of baseline data that can be used as a benchmark for measuring progress toward your goals.
Process Evaluation (Program Monitoring)
Need real-time feedback you can use to make in-the-moment tweaks to program activities? Our expert evaluators have the skills and tools to provide regular, ongoing data-based reviews of your work. Through meetings, briefings, and reports, we’ll show you how much progress you’re making toward your goals, and offer timely insights on how to more effectively engage your audiences, optimize your use of program resources, and achieve your aims.
Summative Evaluation
Nearing the end of your program’s implementation, and need to know if you achieved your goals? We’ll design and carry out an all-encompassing evaluation that helps you connect the dots between specific program activities and outcomes — while also offering evidence-backed recommendations on how to improve on and expand your impacts. Our accessible, actionable reports will help you see what worked, what didn’t, and what could be improved in future iterations of your program.
Comprehensive Evaluation
Need an evaluation partner who will be with you from the planning stage of an intervention through its implementation and all the way to the end of the journey? We can walk with you every step of the way, providing both impact assessments and serving as a thought partner, offering guidance through real-time monitoring, fast feedback, iterative discussions, and written annual reports.
Secondary Data Analysis
Want an evaluation that doesn’t require the collection of new data? If you’ve got an existing dataset, we can re-analyze it to answer new questions, test a new hypothesis, or assess the validity of earlier findings. The results of our analysis will help you build on existing work by identifying new trends and pathways for innovation.
Interested in Hiring Us?
Please get in touch with Knology CEO Joanna Laursen Brucker at joannalb@knology.org. We’ll then connect with you to discuss details, including scheduling, fees, and more.