Can evaluation be experiential?
An inquiry into alternative approaches for evaluating experience
Evaluation is becoming a core area of skills development and interest across organisations in the public sector, the voluntary NGO sector and the community sectors. Government agencies and funding organisations are keen to learn more clearly than ever about the outcomes and impact that their initiatives, projects and investment have on key policy areas and target groups. Essentially they want to know: what difference does it make?
But there is also a growing recognition in the value of learning from evaluation. This shift takes us more strongly into the softer and qualitative territory of capturing experiences, understanding change and generating learning through evaluation.
My desire is to develop approaches to evaluation that validate and recognise experiences in ways that are relevant for individuals, for the organisations and for funders of programmes and initiatives.
This is a perspective of evaluation which involves an exploration of meaning and value of individual and group experience. Where learning, discovery and development are a priority and where the roles of the evaluator and the evaluated become intertwined and mutually recognised for what they add to the evaluation mix.
What does an experiential approach in practice look like?
It is probably useful at this stage to share some examples of evaluation projects from my own work which, I am suggesting, share a number of characteristics and features which might claim to be experiential evaluation.
Example 1 The Community Researcher ApproachThe Transformation Team, works alongside local Faith Communities as they work together to make a difference in the economically poorest communities in Glasgow. They support individuals and communities through a range of services including: community audit, training, accessing funding and developing volunteers. They work strategically to influence and connect policy and decision making with practice within communities. The Transformation Team carry out an annual survey and consultation with their stakeholders to get feedback on their services and to learn more about the difference their work makes for the individuals and communities they work with. A challenge for the Transformation Team was to find meaningful ways to engage with their stakeholders. They were also keen to use the evaluation process to increase the skills of the people they work with. The evaluation approach the Transformation Team chose to develop was a Community Researcher Approach where they recruited, trained and supported a small team of volunteers from the individuals they work with. This group became volunteer co-researchers in the Transformation Team stakeholder survey. This involved them learning about: the co-researcher role and its boundaries; developing and practising their interview skills; creating and piloting questions. Together they helped to design the questionnaire that was used, carried out a series of interviews, and contributed themselves within a focus group.
They came back together to review their experiences as co-researchers and to contribute to the analysis of the data that were collected. The outcomes of using the Community Researcher Approach were:
|
Workshops
I have now run two workshops on this theme: one at the ICEL conference in Australia 2008; and a second at EEEurope conference in Estonia 2009. At these workshops we shared more examples of what Experiential Evaluation might look like in practice and the features that these evaluations shared.
- For more information see:
(PDF Experiential Evaluation 2008)
If you have any comments or examples that you would like to add to my inquiry please get in touch.