After having implemented your campaign, it comes the evaluation time. In this section we give you some suggestion to act your evaluation.
Step 4
Information and communication activities need to be evaluated before, during and after to check for effectiveness, cost-efficiency and relevance.
Evaluation establishes the quality and effectiveness of our activities. First of all, it is important to define the quality and effectiveness criteria. Even if monitoring and evaluation are closely linked, they are different activities.
Monitoring is a systematic and continuous collecting, analysis and using of information for the purpose of management and decision-making.
Evaluation is a periodic assessment of the efficiency, effectiveness, impact, sustainability and relevance of the activities in the context of stated objectives. It is usually undertaken as an independent examination with a view to drawing lessons that may guide our future plans.
Exploiting the 5Ws model again, we can make an easy table using three out of the five Ws, to better understand the differences between Monitoring and Evaluation.
Remember that to monitor and evaluate information and communication activities it is necessary to have:
- a description of the baseline position;
- a monitoring system for data collection;
- a commitment to carry out formal evaluations.
Evaluation is a tool to measure and when we’re going to measure, we need specific indicators. Just as an example we can list the following:
- output indicators: measure the direct outcome of information and communication activities, such as newsletters or number of meetings;
- result indicators: measure the immediate effects of outputs on those receiving or benefiting from them (example: number of people receiving newsletters or attending meetings);
- impact indicators: measure the eventual direct or indirect consequences of information and communication activities on different audiences and their response.
