Sustaining change

Index

Why evaluate?

You didn’t invest all this energy into a program that fails to meet its objectives. Evaluation is an important step in your program planning and implementation. It might even be the most important step.

Assessing the activities, support, resources, and outcomes of your program will inform the YWC Program’s impact and identify improvements and opportunities for growth for future program development.

An evaluation plan should be developed as part of the initial program planning. This will help you examine the YWC Program indicators to program evaluation to determine what data you will need, as well as why, where, when and how the data will be collected.

Developing an evaluation plan

Whether you belong to a public health unit, school and/or community partner, the first step in evaluating your YWC Program project is to contact the local school board, community agency and/ or health unit to determine if ethics is required. If so, consider what internal resources you have to support your ethics application, and work with the organization that is requesting ethics to find out what the steps are and what information is required.

Before you start: before you conduct an evaluation, make sure you’ve checked off the following items:

Obtained research and ethics approval from the school boards, community partner and/ or public health units, where applicable.

Provided an information letter to all participants including parents of participating youth to ensure that participants are fully informed and understand what their involvement will be.

Ensured a Letter of Consent is signed by the youth and their parents/ guardians before participation in the program, including their consent to participate in any evaluation.

Considered youth friendly evaluation methods.

Once that’s established, you’ll need to undertake the following activities. 

  1. Engage your stakeholders in understanding what is needed to plan an evaluation.
  2. Determine the resources you will need for an evaluation plan.
  3. Construct the evaluation design to align with the YWC Logic Model, YWC Program evaluation indicators and with what you are evaluating (process, means, resources, activities, and/or outcomes), the purpose of your evaluation, and the questions you are trying to answer
  4. Decide on a qualitative and/or quantitative method of measuring and appropriate data collections methods (e.g., survey, focus group, key informant interview). Consider youth engaging evaluation strategies to collect data.
  5. Develop an evaluation plan that aligns with code of ethics (if necessary) and that protects confidentiality.
  6. Collect data/gather evidence.
  7. Process data and analyze/interpret results.
  8. Share and apply evaluation findings.

For more information on developing evaluation plans, see resources listed under Tools to Support Evaluation.

Sample YWC Program evaluation indicators and questions

Implementing your evaluation plan

Now you’re ready to begin with data collection and analysis/interpretation of results. Here are evaluation tools, youth friendly evaluation approaches and tips that the YWC Program found useful.



Evaluation can be done via survey or focus group. Consider whether you want a pre-survey to support baseline data and/or post implementation survey or focus group to find out the impact of your implementation activity.

Other factors include:

Consider timing as to when to hold the survey; some sites find that combining evaluation with end of year celebrations, to be a good time.

Consider the inclusion of youth friendly evaluation techniques (see below for more details)

Consider who will conduct the survey or focus group. Do they have a relationship with the youth? Are they aware of the YWC Program?

Youth-friendly evaluation techniques

Sharing of lessons learned

A plan for sharing the results of your evaluation, lessons learned and recommendations should be developed in your evaluation plan and implemented once the evaluation is completed.

Ensure that you use the findings and recommendations from the evaluation to help support the continuation of the Initiative (i.e., what went well, what are we missing, what can we change for the future).

Sustainability planning

In the YWC Program context, it also refers to the extent to which the program implementation is maintained within the school or community as part of its yearly activities.

When planning for sustainability, remember:

Consider the continued capacity (i.e. human, financial, physical resources),  continued delivery (of the practice in absence of the team who introduced it – how is it sustained) and continued health benefits(for the youth and school/community at large) – LCT toolkit

Plan for sustainability early and think long-term

Build implementation teams that will help sustain change – including youth at the centre of these teams

Co-plan with youth a strategy to ensure longevity of the program. In addition to the Champion roles, school can consider including roles within your YWC project that do not require long-term commitment: e.g., planning an event may require short-term support from students and can enable them to participate without needing to commit to the program long-term

Identify and address barriers to sustainability

co-create a succession plan for when turnover within the team arises to ensure program longevity

Recognize and celebrate success

Tools to support evaluation

Developing an Evaluation Plan

Evaluating Health Promotion Programs | Public Health Ontario

Center for Disease Control and Protection’s Introduction  to Program Evaluation for Public Health Programming

YWC Program Logic Model

Ethics review

Contact your school board and/or public health unit.

Sample Project Information Letter

Sample Letter of Consent

Evaluation methods:

Self-evaluation framework

Activity Profile Template

Post-survey Protocol Sample Youth Post-survey Questions Sample

Youth Lead Focus Group Guide and Questions

School Lead Survey Questions Sample

Resources

Next steps

Step 3

Sustaining change

Evaluation is an important step in your program planning and implementation. Ensuring a thorough evaluation also helps learning what works.  Remember to celebrate your successes and plan for the future by examining what opportunities lie ahead, to ensure YWC program sustainability.