Our Methodology
We are dedicated to the creation and use of knowledge to benefit society. We specialize in combining a participatory, stakeholder-centered approach with innovative evaluation strategies. We offer a variety of tools and expertise to help you make real-time decisions for your programs. We can help your organization measure its effectiveness in terms of:
PROGRAM EVALUATION
We’ll perform a variety of evaluation methods to help your organization target the best possible approaches for your program’s needs. With all of our evaluations, we’ll work closely with you to determine the evaluation methods and tools that are the best fits for your project or program. In this way, we’ll help you to gather the most impactful information for your work and community.
The evaluation methods we offer include:
Developmental
Developmental evaluation involves an intense adaptive research period in which we’ll work closely together with your core team to capture real-time innovations in all activities in your program. We focus our energy on turning emergent results into
Formative
During formative evaluation, we’ll study your program in its implementation stages to determine if its elements are having a positive impact on the community your program serves.
Process
With process evaluation, we’ll study your program’s specific activities to assess how effective they are in helping your program reach its intended goals.
Outcomes
Outcomes evaluation is all about the end result. During this evaluation, we’ll assess the effectiveness of a program in producing the changes you intend.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
We’ll guide your organization through the process of strategic planning to help you redefine your outcomes and goals.
Which solutions are you implementing? What kind of programming are you running? How are your partnerships formed? Are your strategies effective in changing communities, changing the lives of children and families?
These are questions that drive us forward when it comes to strategic planning. We help our clients strive toward ambitious yet attainable goals.
TOOLBOX
We’ll use quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods to help you gather visible information about the effectiveness of your projects or programs. We have experience bringing together data from a variety of different sources into a collective whole that answers your research and evaluation questions.
Quantitative data collection and analysis is all about the numbers—numerical, quantifiable data that we can transform into useable statistics, formulate facts, and uncover patterns.
Means of quantitative data collection we often use include:
Multivariate data analysis
Geographic information system (GIS) mapping
Social network analysis (SNA)
Collaboration quality assessment
Survey research
On the other hand, qualitative data collection and analysis involves exploratory research that helps us understand the underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations of the people being studied.
Qualitative methods give us deeper insights into issues via:
Focus groups
Interviews
Community engagement
Participatory research, photo voice, participatory video projects, and other individual and group participation methods