Evaluating engagement activities

Evaluation is a process that facilitates learning and examines what worked well, what did not work well, and why. Evaluation should begin in the planning stages of a community engagement activity and continue throughout the activity.

Evaluating community engagement techniques can help you to:

• find out what worked and what did not
• identify unanticipated outcomes
• apply learning to improve future practice in engagement activities
• know whether involving citizens or communities actually met the community engagement objectives of the program and contributed to improved decisionmaking and
• assess whether the exercise was cost effective in terms of time and resources.

The information generated by evaluation is used to inform future community engagement planning and decision-making and to report on, and improve practice.

Effective evaluation of community engagement activities can provide considerable benefi ts to government agencies. They include:

• improving practice by identifying and articulating lessons and achievements
• developing a shared understanding of what contributes to, and what hinders, successful community engagement
• analysing strengths and weaknesses to inform future planning and decisionmaking
• contributing to setting good-practice standards for future engagement
• helping to build an evidence base for innovative approaches to community engagement
• contributing to engagement capability development by providing feedback on performance
• presenting opportunities for further citizen involvement in the evaluation process and
• building support for citizen and community involvement in government planning and decision-making by providing evidence of how effective engagement works.

Guidance on evaluating community engagement

Engaging Queenslanders: Evaluating community engagement has been developed by the Department of Communities, in collaboration with government agencies. It aims to assist public officials in evaluating community engagement activities and provides guidance in:

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

The resource also provides guidance in developing key evaluation questions, performance criteria and indicators, and, importantly, how the results of evaluation will be reported and shared across agencies, across government and across the sectors.

What does evaluation involve?

Community engagement evaluation involves four main activities:

• developing an evaluation framework including a research plan
• developing data collection tools
• collecting and analysing data and
• interpreting, sharing, reporting, and responding to results.

The scope of these activities will vary depending on the scale of the community engagement activity and the purpose of the evaluation.

Evaluation may require setting up new or concurrent project management arrangements including:

• an evaluation steering committee, which includes key government and community representatives, to direct the design of the evaluation framework and the interpretation of the results
• project plans for data collection, analysis and reporting, including timelines, deadlines and budgets
• project and tender briefs for outside consultants or contractors
• systems for reporting the results of the evaluations to internal and external stakeholders and into knowledge bases and
• systems for the on-going review of projects, programs or policies.

Developing an evaluation framework

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about evaluation is that there is no one-size-fits-all process for evaluating community engagement. Therefore an evaluation framework must be developed for each engagement activity which is tailored to the purpose for which the evaluation will be used, the intended audience of the evaluation, the type of community engagement activity to be evaluated and the scale and signifi cance of the activity.

Scale and significance refers to:

• the amount of resources that have been committed to the community engagement activity (and/or may be committed in the future)
• the significance of the activity to government, including the degree of political support and attention and
• the nature of public expectations surrounding the activity.