Strategies and resources for producing engaging and accessible evaluation reports

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!

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Comment by Rituu B Nanda on April 13, 2014 at 11:27

This is courtesy AEA 365 tips- http://aea365.org/blog/sheila-b-robinson-on-delightful-diagrams-fro...

Hello! I’m Sheila B. Robinson, aea365′s Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor with a new cool tool to spice up your evaluation presentations and reports!

Do you know the feeling you get when you stumble upon something so good you want to share it, but then again, part of you wants to keep it all to yourself? It will be apparent from this post which side won out for me.

Lesson Learned: Based on advice from respected presentation and information designers, I now shy away from canned, cliche, or clip art images, including charts and diagrams. I’m no designer though, and often find it challenging to start with a blank page when I have something to share that calls for a good visual representation of a relationship.

I’ve enjoyed Microsoft’s SmartArt graphics that come with Office, and they are quite customizable, but with only 185 choices or so, I find I start recognizing them in other people’s presentations, especially when they are not customized by the user, and they begin to remind me of the overused, 20th century clip art we’ve all come to loathe.

Rad Resource: Turns out, one of my favorite presentation designers, Nancy Duarte, has offered her expertise in a fabulous resource she has made available to all of us, and it’s FREE! Diagrammer™ is “a visualization system” featuring over 4,000 downloadable, customizable diagrams. Duarte, Inc. makes it easy to search for exactly what you need by allowing you to search all diagrams, or filter by relationship (flow, join, network, segment, or stack), style (2D or 3D), or number of nodes (1-8) needed.

Once you choose a diagram (and “shopping” for one is half the fun!), you simply download it as a PowerPoint slide, and fill in your text, or customize the various components. You can change shapes, colors, sizes and more. Diagrams range from the very simplest to somewhat complex. Here are just a few examples:

Diagram 1 Diagram 2 Diagram 3Diagram 4

Most diagrams you see come in a variety of configurations. Each of the above examples are also available with different numbers of nodes.

Hot Tip: Duarte’s diagrams are in a gorgeous color palette if you ask me, but often it’s the colors you want to customize to match your report style or the colors of your organization. Here’s a before and after with the original digram, and my redesign.

Network hub original

Custom diagram 2

Cool Trick: Take some time searching diagrams as you’re thinking about the relationship you want to communicate. This added reflection time will give you the opportunity to dig a little deeper into your data and you may be rewarded with new insights.

Comment by Rituu B Nanda on April 4, 2014 at 11:25

Response  from Robert Kutter, thanks Rob!

Dear Rituu,

It really depends on your data and what you're trying to communicate.

One strategy for turning qualitative data into quantitative data is to code it. That is, develop some themes in the qualitative data and count how often they occur (e.g., how many people say that the health issue is important to them).

For my own work, I use mostly free, open-source software like R (http://www.r-project.org/), which could be used to generate graphs.

So one approach would be to code the qualitative data and then plot the results using software like R.

I'd be happy to have a look at what you have now and provide some more detailed recommendations.

Kind regards,
Rob


________________________

Rob Kutter
PhD Candidate

Arizona State University | School of Sustainability
Wrigley Hall (WGHL) | 800 S Cady Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281
USA

Comment by Rituu B Nanda on April 1, 2014 at 23:16

This response is from blog is created by Richard Gaunt in London and Glenn O’Neil in Geneva and focuses on evaluation and measurement in communications, training, management and other fields.

10 evaluation Infographics

Infographics are visual images used to represent information and/or data. Increasingly we see infographics used to communicate key evaluation findings. It can be an excellent tool to communication key findings quickly and to reach diverse audiences.  The presentation below contains 10 evaluation infographic  that I've collated from various evaluations. I think these examples show the different possibilities and options for how you can use this tool to communicate key findings.  http://intelligentmeasurement.net/2014/03/26/10-evaluation-infograp...

Comment by KylieHutchinson on April 1, 2014 at 23:09
Hi Rituu,

Three key principles I give in my webinars on Effective Reporting for Evaluators are:

1) Target Your Audience, and determine what reporting vehicles are best suited to each,
2) Develop a Communications Plan, and formally plan, schedule, and budget for different communications activities,
3) Layer Your Information, as in a hamburger analogy. Think of the traditional detailed report as the heavy meat centre, but also provide your stakeholders with easy to digest options such as two-pagers, info graphics, screencasts, podcasts, etc. (your bun, cheese, lettuce). If you make sure that each option is linked to the next, you allow each stakeholder to go as shallow or as deep as they want to in the results. And think of your detailed data, tables, etc. as the bottom bun, these are all in the Appendices of the final report.

Hope that helps,

Kylie
www.communitysolutions.ca
Comment by Vahista Dastoor on April 1, 2014 at 22:18

You could intersperse your reports with infographics. Since you have more qualitative data than quantitative, you may not be able to create a typical data-heavy infographic, but you could create process flows or other logic flows using clip-art and MS Office graphics icons with blurbs and comments.

These can be very effective and generate a lot of interest.

Comment by Rituu B Nanda on April 1, 2014 at 18:28

Leah Goldstein Moses, President/CEO, The Improve Group...thanks Leah

Hi Rituu!

One thing I do with qualitative data is use pictures that illustrate concepts. For example, if someone is talking about their friendships as being very important to their health, you could find and insert high-quality pictures of friends.

I like Morguefile for free, sharable pictures. Flickr is ok, too, but you want to make sure you know whether the picture can be used for your purposes or is copyrighted.

The AEA365 blog has had some great posts on data visualization that have great tips:  http://aea365.org/blog/category/data-visualization-and-reporting/




Warmly,
Leah

Leah Goldstein Moses, President/CEO, The Improve Group
Working with organizations to make the most of information, navigate complexity and ensure their investments of time and money lead to meaningful, sustained impact.

Comment by Rituu B Nanda on April 1, 2014 at 18:23

This comes from Giorgio Bertini

Best Practices in the Reporting of Participatory Action Research

In this article, the authors present best-practices suggestions for writing about PAR based on an analysis of PAR articles published between 2000 and 2008. PAR does not necessarily conform to established report-writing conventions, including the organization of an article with familiar sections such as procedures, instruments, data analysis, and results. PAR authors, then, are left largely up to their own devices with regard to how to guide readers through their discussion. This is absolutely not to suggest that PAR write-upsshould be forced into a strict sequence of topics. One of the appealing aspects of the PAR literature is thecreativity and passion of its authors and the rich narrative quality that many of them bring to their writing, which also allows community voices to emerge more authentically. Nevertheless, it is obviously more helpful when the report is organized in some fashion that allows readers to follow along without getting lost and when authors present enough facts to convey the essential parameters of the project. As we reviewed this literature, we began to look ahead to the day when some of us might want to write about our own projects, and we decided to identify those characteristics that, for us, distinguished the best writing about PAR. Under the final heading, organization of the write-up, we profiled the approach taken by the authors to the presentation of the project.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bz8cVS8LoO7OZWhQVTJyMTcwOWM/edit?pli=1

Comment by Rituu B Nanda on April 1, 2014 at 16:55
dralee katsaruware

dralee

dralee katsaruware

APC- Monitoring and Evaluation at Restless Development .Zimbabwe

It depends with the context, for example u can put pictures of beneficiaries receiving the intervention, beneficiaries at a meeting, pictures of the situation before and after the intervention , these will captivate the readers of the report.

Comment by Pramod Sharma on March 31, 2014 at 23:42

"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:-)" 

Data, stories, quotes are  good if  it supported the point which you wanted to highlight.  Key findings with support of various data and stories, pictures are good enough for a complete story.  And if you have extra data, stories, pictures, keep it for future use or add it as appendices.

Comment by Rituu B Nanda on March 31, 2014 at 16:01

Responses from American Evaluation Association Linkedin group

Corey Newhouse

Corey

Corey Newhouse

Founder and Principal, Public Profit

Stephanie Evergreen's book, Presenting Data Effectively, has lots of good advice about layout and display. It has vastly improved the accessibility of our evaluation reports.http://stephanieevergreen.com/book/

harry jones

harry

harry jones

consultant

So what's working for you in terms of involvement, Rituu, the hard sell, the in-group hustle ("You don't want to be left out, do you?"), the Tom Sawyer "We're having a great time without you" approach, etc.?

Inuwa Gombe

Inuwa

Inuwa Gombe

Monitoring & Evaluation at GMSHSDP

i think you should simply summarize your methodology and results using power point and then attaching it at the top of the main report. this is another way of enticing readers with reading apathy who may wish to read the details after going through the pp presentation. it has worked for me in presenting reports with either only qualitative data or both qualitative/quantitative data
another way is using audio visuals with simple devices with the assistance of a professional to carry out qualitative evaluations. from my experience, it does not cost much to do. there is no need for any transcription and use of software if it is simply an evaluation. busy people generally prefer to watch and listen rather than read several pages at a time.

Rakesh Mohan

Rakesh

Rakesh Mohan

Director at Office of Performance Evaluations

Hello Rituu,

I will second Corey Newhouse's suggestion. Stephanie Evergreen has great ideas. Last year we invited her to provide training to my office. In addition to her book, you can get some wonderful ideas from her blog post: 
http://stephanieevergreen.com/blog/?doing_wp_cron=1396241498.441334...

Also, you may wish to look at the two New Directions for Evaluation volumes she recently coedited (NDE Volumes 139 & 140).

Here are five reports my office produced in the last couple of years; they all had good impact on policymakers, stakeholders, and the media:

1. The Department of Health and Welfare's Management of Appropriated Funds

http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/ope/publications/reports/r1312.html

1. Equity in Higher Education Funding

http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/ope/publications/reports/r1106.html

1. State Employee Compensation and Turnover

http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/ope/publications/reports/r1303.html

1. Guide to Comparing Business Tax Policies

http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/ope/publications/reports/r1306.html

1. Workforce Issues Affecting Public School Teachers

http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/ope/publications/reports/r1301.html

I hope you find this information useful. Feel free to contact me should you have any questions.

Best wishes and Namaste,

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