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National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention

Evaluation

Reading and writing

Evaluation is an essential tool for project management. It is a powerful means to demonstrate the potential value of an initiative and gain the support needed to sustain effective activities and desired outcomes. Partners and stakeholders should understand how an initiative is impacting the community, and be able to articulate this to people who may be involved in sustaining the initiative’s efforts. In most cases, the evaluator is primarily responsible for supporting the implementation of the evaluation in the field. However, as a project director, you should stay fully informed about the progress of the evaluation, since you are responsible for ensuring that all aspects of the initiative work together smoothly.

After evaluation results are gathered, it is important to present them so that they are understandable and can be easily communicated to others. Positive evaluation data can build institutional, political, and community support for sustaining your initiative’s components. People are more likely to support the dedication of resources to continue a program if they can see that it is making a real difference in their community.

Evaluation Toolkit

The SS/HS Evaluation Toolkit is designed to provide you with tools, information, and resources to help you design and implement your evaluation, fulfill your obligations to the cross-site National Evaluation, and meet other Federal reporting requirements (especially those of the Government Performance Results Act – commonly called GPRA). The contents of the toolkit are presented in approximately the same sequence as the information in the Evaluation section of the SS/HS Project Resource Guide. However, the “heart” of the Toolkit are those tools which, together, will help a project design and/or refine its Logic Model and develop an Evaluation Plan consistent with that Logic Model.

SS/HS Evaluation Team

Technical assistance resources available to SS/HS sites include their Technical Assistance Specialist as well as members of the Evaluation Team. For more information on how to receive comprehensive and targeted technical assistance regarding any evaluation issue, contact the Evaluation Team.