Discussion Guide for Program Evaluators

Discussion Guide for Program Evaluators

• Tell me about yourself.

• Educational background, career path

• The organization you work for

• Your knowledge of healthy marriage and relationship programming previous to this project

• Tell me how you became the evaluator of this program.

• If internal, how assigned; if external, the competition process

• Why interested in evaluating this program

• Tell me about the program.

• How the program works (who the target audience is, what its structure is, how marriage education is delivered)

• The problem the program is addressing, overarching goals, and the targeted participant outcomes

• Tell me about developing the evaluation plan

• Whose input you sought (program staff, community leaders, other stakeholders, the target audience)

• What questions the program wanted answered and how evaluation questions ultimately selected

• How you developed an adequate evaluation within financial constraints

• The evaluation plan developed (how you are answering your questions), use of a logic model

• Methodology

• Measured developed/used, how adapted to target population

• Data collection instruments developed/used, how adapted to target population, who collects data and how

• Use of consent forms; collection of individual-level data and protection of confidentiality

• Use of comparison or control group and how created/identified

• How evaluating healthy marriage programming was different from previous program evaluations

• Any aspects of the evaluation that take into account cultural considerations specific to the Hispanic population

• What you were not able to do with the evaluation but would have liked to

• Tell me how the evaluation is going so far.

• Stage in the process, changes made if any, problems that arose and how addressed

• What initial findings suggest

• Communication with the program – how often, what is discussed, aspects of most interest to staff

• How interim findings are used by program staff

• Tell me about a successful evaluation.

• Best practices

• Level of client involvement

• Use of interim findings

• Anything else you’d like to tell me or think I should know

Wave 2 Questions

• Tell me about the status of the evaluation

• Current stage

• Changes to research questions, methodology, measures, data collection tools, data analysis

• Successes and challenges; extent to which evaluation implemented as planned and adaptations made

• Tell me about findings to date

• Outputs

• Immediate outcomes

• Use of findings by program

• What you may have done differently

• Dissemination plans

• How you would like to see the evaluation used

• Your goals for involvement with healthy marriage

• Tell me what suggestions you would have for another evaluator of a new healthy marriage program.