“Evaluation should not be conducted simply to prove that a project worked, but also to improve the way it works.”
— W. K. Kellogg Foundation Evaluation Handbook
An evaluation is only as good as it is useful—and actually used! Presenting results to various stakeholders in an appropriate manner will encourage them to use the evaluation in the way you planned. As you develop your argument, consider the audience for the evaluation. Is it a partner? Is it your immediate supervisor? The library director? Your team? The city council? You will likely have multiple audiences. Your primary audience is the audience who will directly use the answer to the question you are asking, or are the target of the argument you are building. However, they are not the only audience. A secondary audience includes people who will be affected by the evaluation conclusions, even though they are not direct decision-makers (this might include staff, partners’ staff, or library users). Your tertiary audience includes people further removed from the project but who may still be interested in the report (perhaps the general public, or librarians from other systems).1 The nature of your audiences will influence how you present your results.
“Whether or not your project goes as planned, it is important to communicate results of the project effectively to people who have the potential to extend, replicate, build on, or learn from your work.”
— CAISE Principal Investigator’s Guide
The point of evaluation is to obtain information that can be used constructively moving forward, so be honest. If something was less than successful, don’t try to sweep it under the rug—figure out why and what you or someone else can do about it next time.
The evaluation report will mirror the evaluation plan to some extent. Your report should include:
There are many other ways you can share your evaluation results to interested audiences.
Remember to tailor your language and presentation to your audience. Community members, for instance, won’t all be familiar with “jargony” library or educational terms.
At the beginning of the evaluation process, you had a reason for conducting an evaluation. Now that you’ve completed that effort, it’s time to use what you’ve discovered. Your evaluation report will likely include some recommendations based on the findings and your original questions and purpose for the evaluation. The utility of your work doesn’t have to stop there, however—there are probably lessons learned that will be useful in other ways.
At least some of your recommendations should address your evaluation questions. But you may also have uncovered unexpected results that lead to recommendations as well. These should also be included.
State the recommendations clearly, and link them to the evidence you reported earlier in the evaluation report. Some of your recommendations might involve:
Don’t let the hard work you’ve done evaluating and assessing your initiative gather dust after the final report is finished.