Guides for evaluation

The following resources introduce you to thinking about and carrying out evaluation of your project. We have tried to find well-written, jargon-free, resources to take you through the basics.

Tools
Title	Summary
Addressing the challenges for evaluation and learning in community-led health	This practical resource introduces the basic things you'll need to think about before evaluating your project. It is aimed at groups with a health focus but should be relevant to all groups seeking to benefit their communities.	More

An evaluation resource for healthy living centres	Produced by the Health Development Agency in England in 2002, this resource provides an overview of evaluation for those involved in community development health projects such as healthy living centres. It aims to identify the issues involved in evaluation and provide pointers for further information.	More

Evaluating community projects: A practical guide	A step-by-step guide to evaluation published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation back in 2005	More

Evaluation Support Scotland	Evaluation Support Scotland (ESS) works with voluntary organisations and funders so that they can measure and report on their impact. ESS's website provides lots of guidance and also gives information on workshops and further support.	More

Explaining the Difference	A Big Lottery guide to identifying need, clarifying aims, measuring progress and learning. This guide is aimed at those who are new to outcomes approaches. It is primarily focused on making your case to funders, but good for clarifying thinking about outcomes more generally.	More

LEAP	LEAP stands for Learning, Evaluation and Planning, and takes you through a 4 stage cycle of planning what you want to achieve, recording what you do and reviewing what you have done. It is now online, with ready made boxes for you and others involved in your project to enter information as you go. The website allows you to create reports of what you have entered at the click of a button.	More

How good is our third sector organisation?	This is a new resource currently being piloted by Education Scotland which has been developed to assist third sector organisations to carry out their own self-evaluation more effectively.	More

Infed.org	This website is focused on community education and commmunity development so can be quite theoretical, but there's also a useful section on evaluation.	More

The Mini-Evaluation Pack	Designed by Youth Scotland for groups working with young people, the Mini-Evaluation Pack contains an overall framework and specific exercises to help effectively evaluate a project over time.	More

Social Capital, Health and Wellbeing – A Planning and Evaluation Toolkit	This toolkit helps you to measure the impact of existing work on social capital, health and wellbeing, to think about your outcomes and develop new ideas.	More

Why bother involving people in evaluation? Beyond feedback	Produced by Evaluation Support Scotland, this practical tool helps organisations plan why, when and how to involve the people they work with in evaluation.	More

Your project and its outcomes	Again from the Big Lottery, this is a simple introduction to thinking about and setting outcomes, and measuring how far you have achieved them.	More