5c. Assess possible outcome evaluation
There're only a limited number of possible high level outcome evaluation designs. Outcome evaluation asks the question - 'Can I prove that this activity actually changed high level outcomes rather than them being changed by something else'.
• Think about each of the seven possible outcome evaluation designs used in Easy Outcomes and work out whether any of them are appropriate, feasible or affordable.
•You can find more information about these seven designs in the Easy Outcomes Workbook (PDF). If you don't know much about evaluation designs you'll have to talk to someone who does at this stage in the process. Show them your Easy Outcomes work so far and get them to help you write up just this particular step.
Keeping a clear record of your decisions about outcome evaluation is usually very helpful when outside stakeholders start asking questions about why you're doing what you're doing. The screenshot shows your conclusions about the first four of the possible outcome evaluation designs.
This screenshot shows your thinking about the other four possible high level outcome evaluation designs.
Only some of these high level outcome evaluation designs will give you the information you need to do later stages of Easy Outcomes. In particular, if you want to do certain types of economic analysis you need to have a quantitative measure of the effect of your activity on high level outcomes. This is called an 'effect size' and can usually only be worked out from doing one of the first four of these high level outcome evaluation designs.