Effective program evaluation is a systematic way to improve and account for public health actions by involving procedures that are useful, feasible, ethical, and accurate. Essentially, evaluation looks at whether or not a specific intervention was effective from several different perspectives. While monitoring creates raw data, evaluation is the analysis of that data. Evaluation differs from quality control and assurance because it is primarily for reporting to others outside the organization, including board members, donors, and funders; while quality control and assurance is for internal use.

Evaluation often looks at process and outcome goals or measures. These are sometimes confusing but in general:

• Outcome measures – describe a program’s results and determine whether the intended outcomes were achieved. Outcome measures track what happened.
• Process measures – describe a program’s services, activities, policies, and procedures. Process measures look at the processes an organization undertook and the “how and why” of organizational achievements.

You may remember these from the section on strategic planning because evaluation allows you to look back at your strategic planning to see if you met your goals and objectives.

In thinking about evaluation, it is essential for leaders to begin by asking some of the following:

• What will be evaluated? (That is, what is the program and in what context does it exist?)
• Who is the evaluation for?
• What aspects of the program will be considered when judging performance?
• What standards (i.e., type or level of performance) must be reached for the program to be considered successful?
• What evidence will be used to indicate how the program has performed?
• What conclusions regarding program performance are justified by comparing the available evidence to the standards selected?
• How will the lessons learned from the evaluation be used to improve effectiveness?