Strategies and resources for producing engaging and accessible evaluation reports

[Patricia Rogers]

Do you have good ideas about how to make evaluation reports more interesting?  

On the BetterEvaluation site this week we're sharing some strategies and resources, including data visualisations and cartoons, skeleton evaluation reports, and findings as headings.  

Rituu has kindly shared a real-time evaluation query about this, and is going to 'road-test' the best suggestions on her evaluation report.  You can read about 7 strategies, with lots of resources, on the BetterEvaluation site http://betterevaluation.org/blog/producing_engaging_accessible_eval....

Hello from India! I need your help. 

I am a facilitator of community engagement approach. A non-profit organisation invited my colleague and me to mobilise three communities to respond to a health issue. During last 10 months we saw amazing results in terms of community response. To further stimulate community action we conducted Participatory action research with communities and the NGO staff.

Now we are preparing the the report which has a lot of data and looks very boring. This is qualitative data with lot of quotes. In my experience such reports are not read. To encourage utilisation of research findings I would like to prepare a report which would entice people:-)  Would you know any data visualization ideas? I have never done this nor do I have funds to buy any software. 

As I have to submit the report by 5th April, I  request for a quick response. I will very much appreciate your help.

Thanks and regards,
Rituu

You can add comments and suggestions on the Gender and Evaluation site or on the BetterEvaluation site.

Look forward to your ideas!

[Rituu B Nanda]

Another response from African Evaluation Association linkedin group 

Apurba

Apurba Datta

Technical Coordinator- Monitoring and Evaluation in Value Chain Project

Use, the qualitative data summary is a boring and very few people got interest to read it. So the data visualization is the way to make it juicy to the readers. 
So far I experienced, the inforgraphics may be the a good solution. 
Another way you can follow, using quantitative proxy for qualitative response. and then use any visualization tolls you feel comfort. 

Hope your report will be a good food and delicious. waiting to read it. 

Thanks 

Apurba

[Rituu B Nanda]

Thanks Saeid for your valuable comments. In this PAR after collecting data, we presented the findings to the communities. Thereafter, we got the three communities together, put them in mixed groups and asked them to share their community response in terms of the project with each other. Thereafter each group presented what they had learned from each other and how would they apply it in their community. The session ended with the NGO staff sharing what they had learned through the PAR in terms of community response and the facilitation of PAR. 

[Saeid Nouri Neshat]

I think the quotes are very important - especially that you can merge with their photos. People like to see their photos and comments. In one evaluation report, we even added one part of "lessons learnt by the community" with all the words mentioned by them. We had other sections for other stakeholders.

[Sandhya Suresh]

Hi Rittu,

Most of us are usually confused at this stage when we collect so much data but end up understanding that much of it is of no use or we say we should have collected this data as well or that data as well ! I guess a good report is always a right blend of qualitative as well as quantitative data presentation.You may present major findings in the form of good diagrams or graphs.If you can run some basic statistical formulas such as correlation and regression or chi square test it would give valid results.To make the reading interesting,use case studies and quotes from the respondents as well !

So happy report writing.

 

Sandhya

[Rituu B Nanda]

Another response comes from African Evaluation Association Group on Linkedin

dralee

(dralee katsaruware, APC- Monitoring and Evaluation at Restless Development .Zimbabwe)

try to put lot of pictures that have meaning , many people may be interested

[Rituu B Nanda]

Some responses from another facebook group RosViz10 which is for those interested in graphic facilitation at workplace- https://www.facebook.com/groups/122858401095871/

• 
  
• 

  Barbara Berry Hi, While this link is not so much about data visualization and action research it does offer some tools for visualizing program logic models. so, take a look, there maybe an interesting way for you to represent the action research process or other dimensions of your work using this tool:  http://betterevaluation.org/blog/drawing_logic_models
  Barb

  

  52 weeks of BetterEvaluation: Week 3: Q & A about drawing logic...

  betterevaluation.org
  

  W Carol's work showed that logic models don't always have to be in the form input->process->outputs->outcomes->impact. Instead she showed how useful it can be to focus on teasing out the different possible causal paths between program activities and its outcomes.

  23 March at 20:01 · Unlike · 1
• 

  Rituu At Constellation Thanks a lot Barbara Berry, I will check this out. Better evaluation is one of my favourite websites:-) Warm greetings!!

   
• 

  Rituu At Constellation I found another resourcehttp://stephanieevergreen.com/guest-post-using-visual.../

  

  Guest Post: Using Visual Communication to Increase Evaluation Utili...

  stephanieevergreen.com
  

  Hi! I’m Nate Wilairat with EMI Consulting in Seattle. We work with cities and ut...See more

   
• 

  Patricia Rogers Great ideas here. Also check out putting evaluation findings into fortune cookies (thanks Stephanie Evergreen)http://stephanieevergreen.com/findings-cookies/ and Ann Emery's guides to making Excel graphs look fabulous http://annkemery.com/excel/charts/

  

  Findings Cookies | Evergreen Data

  stephanieevergreen.com
  

  If food can get people to meetings, maybe it can get people interested in evaluation findings, too. Introducing, the Findings Cookie.

   
• 

  Michelle Laurie Some things I've used in the past are creating icons to represent certain sections/key themes that repeat; doing a visual summary of the data (hand drawn) with Lisa Gates Thiessen, including some hand drawn (iPad) images to spruce up the text and invite the readers in more...if you want examples I can email some.

•  

[Rituu B Nanda]

Second response I got in Facebook group Action Learning Action Research Association Inc (ALARA), from Giorgio Bertini who is a multidisciplinary researcher, founder and director of the Learning Change Project, with a large open library with 8 blogs for open learning. Thanks Giorgio!

• 

  Giorgio Bertini I am with Claudia Gillberg. Consider the Report just as part of the participatory process, inviting people to the process and breaking it with several workshops and assemblies, participatory writing as an open-book, with people contributing and discussing it. I have done like that and it is extremely easy and enjoyable for everybody. I have done it even at a distance with distant PAR groups.

   
• 

  Rituu At Constellation I should have done this before PAR but what I did is that I wrote to the NGO and asked them what they would want in the report, what would be useful. The research findings were shared with the community and thereafter they drafted their action plan.

   
• 

  Giorgio Bertini Anyway, have a look at 2 of my posts today, one on academic paper writing and the othe on community change projects, that might give you soe ideas. I will search for more. one is 

  Inspirational Writing for Academic Publication

  http://changemethods.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/inspirational-writing...

[Rituu B Nanda]

I am a member of a Facebook group Action Learning Action Research Association Inc (ALARA), I shared this query in the facebook. First response from this group:

Claudia Gillberg One thing I'd like to say is that my reports are always as participatory as possible. I have not ever seen my participants bored by a report. Why? Because they recognise themselves in it, they see their quotes and illustrations of their work and they understand it's not a top-down view ('they said', 'they did'). Of course there are different demands on different types of reports but depending on the leeway you may or may not have you can make a report as inclusvie and participatory as you wish. I also always have a forum in which parts of a report (especially 'conclusions') can be discussed and critiqued/complemented so that they are not written from a position of power when the whole workshop was predicated on the principles of participation.

 

Claudia Gillberg is currently research adviser to UNICEF, Rights respecting schools http://center.hj.se/encell/en/about-encell/staff/claudia-gillberg.html

Thanks Claudia!