You will create a final program evaluation of the program you have evaluated for your community agency. Your final evaluation will have several components described below. Attention should be given to formatting and layout so that a professional product is presented. Final evaluations may be shared with the organization with student permission. Please use 12-point Times New Roman font. There is no set page requirement, however, aiming for 12-15 pages can be a goal. Points will not be deducted if you have more or fewer pages, rather, points will be deducted for not meeting the requirements of the assignment.
An example of a program evaluation will be posted on Module 14. This is posted to let you see how your program evaluation might be formatted and what the information might look like when compiled together. You can also google program evaluations to find other examples if those are helpful for you.
Executive Summary: Think of the executive summary as an abstract like we would read in a published journal article. The executive summary is a snapshot and overview of the evaluation that you are presenting and the information that will follow in the report in more detail. This should include the statement of the problem (use and appropriately reference citations) that your program seeks to solve; the program’s impact; and a summary of your results.
Program Description: In this section you are going to describe the program being evaluated in detail. You can think about this as an assessment, if you were writing an assessment of a client, what is important to know? Write about the program and describe the program. You should have started this with your logic model assignment. You will want this to be more robust and complete for the final evaluation. Some questions to help get you started may include: What is the purpose of the program? Who does it serve? How does it work? How long does it last?, etc. In this section you will draw on empirical articles from peer reviewed journals to connect the program and what we know about this focus area. At least 5 empirical articles should be used throughout the final evaluation.
Program Setting: In this section you will provide the context for the program you are evaluating. As social workers we consider the person in the environment. This is no different for a program evaluation. Think of your program as the “person” and the setting as the environment. Where is the agency located? What is the community like? What is important to know? For example, if the agency is in Germantown, what might be important for someone to know about the area and the clients that might participate in the program? If your program and agency are in Orange Mound, what might be important? If the program draws clients from across Memphis, what is important to know about the population, the community, the structure? Describe the agency, the city, the neighborhood, etc. Paint the picture for your audience of the setting. You can also consider using pictures to bring the setting to life if you would like. Be sure to appropriately cite your references.
Program Goals: In this section you are going to state and describe the goals of the program. You will draw on what you have in your logic model (modify if necessary). The goals include the outcomes (short-term goals) and the impact (long-term goals). For this section you will do more than simply state the goals. You will describe them and provide complete sentence narrative to help draw connections between the problem that the program is addressing (stated in your executive summary) and connecting to aspects in the program description and setting. As you are pulling your evaluation together, you are telling a cohesive story from beginning to end, not just having pieces to check off a list. If you keep this in mind, it will help with flow and your evaluation will be more fluid and complete. You may have literature to connect in this section.
Method: Int his section you are describing the methods you used for your data analysis. In detail you will describe your data, how you analyzed your data (the statistical tests you chose to use and why). In this section you will also describe your sample (provide some information about who the data are from, for example, clients? staff members? etc.)
Results Narrative: In this section you are presenting the results in narrative form. You will provide the results from your analyses. This section should include descriptive data as well as the results from the statistical analyses. Your results section should provide all the detail necessary for the reader to understand what tests you ran and the results. This should be complete so the reader does not have to look at charts/figures/graphs to understand what was found during the analysis.
Results Figures: For this portion, you will need to have several graphs and/or tables embedded within your written document. You will need to reference these in your narrative. Similar to charts and table sin published articles, when writing about the information in a pie chart, for example, you would write the information and then say (see figure 1). Then you place the pie chart in the document. Similar to the narrative portion, your charts, figures, and graphs must be appropriate for the data and be able to convey the necessary information to stand on their own. The reader should not need to reference the narrative in order to understand the charts, figures, and graphs.
Implications & Recommendations: In this section you will discuss implications and make recommendations for the program and agency. You will discuss the results and what they mean for the program, agency, clients, etc. You will also make recommendations. Also think about policy recommendations (this can be program policy, agency policy, local policy, state policy, or federal policy). Your recommendations should be based on the goals of the program and the results of your evaluation and should connect back to the literature.
