Commissioning an evaluation

If you think that you or your organisation would like to commission an evaluation, we are happy to discuss your requirements to tailor and design an evaluation to best suit the questions you want answers to.

The main purpose of evaluation is to examine particular programmes, interventions or innovations and to determine the extent to which they have met their goals or objectives.

Previous clients have found it helpful to think about the questions below, as it enabled them to have a clearer idea of the purpose of carrying out an evaluation:

• How will an evaluation benefit our organisation?
• Is it a requirement of our funding body? If so, what do they want to know from the evaluation?
• How has our intervention benefited our client population? Have we any lessons to learn?
• What have we done well or not so well?
• Can we improve on any areas?

We need to find out enough information to understand your business or service and create a bespoke evaluation which fits your needs.

If you are a small local organisation commissioning research for the first time, the process of commissioning evaluation might be something like this:

• Think clearly about what aspects of your work you want to evaluate
• Clarify your budget for the evaluation
• Contact us by phone or email to set up a meeting
• We will have a discussion about your requirements such as what you currently do, what the project is about, what timescale is involved, who we would need to talk to to gather evidence, whether you wish to commission a participatory style of evaluation and need interim reports or presentations
• When the details are clear, we will write a draft proposal, timescale and budget so you can see what we propose.
• We will meet to discuss the details and make sure you are satisfied
• If you agree, we can proceed to carry out the evaluation on your behalf
• You will need to sign a contract detailing the contributions of both parties
• Depending on your organisation and what we are evaluating, we will contact the appropriate ethics committees (and research management and development committees if you are an NHS organisation). Obtaining ethical approval is can sometimes take around two months to complete. However, as we are sure you will appreciate, it is vital for us to get approval on your behalf to ensure the safety and welfare of the target population
• Once the appropriate organisations approve the evaluation we can start
• We will prepare any interim reports or presentations, as agreed
• We will write the final report in a suitable format, eg paper report, DVD, Braille, additional languages. Please make sure that you state your preference at the initial stages so that this can be built into the costing
• We can also arrange a conference for disseminating the evaluation results. Again you will need to state this in the original proposal.