What are we evaluating?
PB processes and activities come in all shapes and sizes however in general there are four key activity areas where separate evaluation stages are both beneficial and critical to the development and sustainability of ongoing and future PB processes and programmes.
The key activity areas are identified as being:
1. Public PB events (Including deliberation and voting events)
2. PB project impact evaluation (funded and non-funded)
3. PB process and delivery evaluation
4. Strategic PB programme evaluation
The next sections explore each of these activity areas in more detail, in relation to the 4-step evaluation process set out earlier in this resource. We have aimed to highlight reasons for evaluating, suggested potential outcomes, identified appropriate methods of evidence collection, and provided tips on recording and useful samples where appropriate.
Things to Consider:
Evaluation in more than one of the activity areas above will be needed in most PB projects due to the processes and activities implemented, however not all practitioners will require to complete an evaluation of the Strategic PB Programme – this will be dependent on the size and scale of the overall PB programme. This will be most relevant where multiple PB processes are implemented as part of a larger PB programme.
Where a strategic evaluation is anticipated then thought should be given early to the wider objectives set out within the PB charter (democratic participation, autonomy, equality, community empowerment creativity and transparency) and steps taken to gather impact evidence of these throughout all processes contained within the scope of the programme being evaluated.
These evaluations will typically be linked to each other and inform multiple or further stages. For example, opinions on PB events and the application process could inform learning and evaluation on how well the wider PB process performed as well as (where appropriate) the overall Strategic PB Programme.
Dedicating resources to carry out consistent and robust evaluation activities will be beneficial to any PB process especially when demonstrating success and learning.
This pack provides limited examples based on experience which should be used as a guide to support evaluation. Every evaluation is different and should be treated individually with methods being adopted that are suitable and appropriate to the project and activity in hand.
