Purpose of this resource

The involvement of clients and citizens in the business of government planning, decision-making and service delivery is important for ensuring the responsiveness, quality and effectiveness of government programs and services. Effective community engagement also contributes to broader social outcomes such as building community capacity and supporting democratic processes.

Engaging Queenslanders: Evaluating community engagement has been designed to assist public officials at all levels to evaluate community engagement activities. It provides guidance in:

• developing an evaluation framework
• developing evaluation data collection tools
• interpreting and analysing evaluation data
• ensuring evaluation outcomes feed into future planning and decision-making.

Rather than presenting a prescriptive approach to evaluating community engagement activities, the resource encourages good judgement in matching the scope and methods of evaluation with the objectives of the engagement program. This approach recognises that the process of evaluation can vary from a relatively small but purposeful and focused assessment of a program’s progress or outcomes to a more formalised evaluation study.

The guide is provided in four parts.

• Part 1 provides an introduction to community engagement evaluation.
• Part 2 overviews the steps involved in developing an evaluation framework.
• Part 3 discusses the interpretation, sharing, reporting on and use of evaluation results.
• Part 4 addresses the more complex subject of evaluating the longer-term outcomes of community engagement.

The resource is designed to be used in conjunction with the Queensland Government’s Get involved website (www.getinvolved.qld.gov.au). This site provides additional evaluation resources including:

• tools to develop an evaluation framework
• community engagement evaluation case studies
• examples of community engagement evaluation performance criteria and indicators.

Engaging Queenslanders: Evaluating community engagement is part of a suite of resources being produced by the Department of Communities, in collaboration with other agencies and practitioners, to support and promote effective evaluation of engagement activities across government.

Other resources in the suite include:

• Engaging Queenslanders: Improving community engagement across the Queensland Public Sector
• Engaging Queenslanders: An introduction to community engagement
• Engaging Queenslanders: Community engagement in the business of government
• Engaging Queenslanders: A guide to community engagement showcasing events and
• Engaging Queenslanders: Community engagement methods and techniques.

Queensland public officials planning and undertaking community engagement are encouraged to read these resources. These, as well as other community engagement resources, are also provided on the Get involved website.