Thursday, July 12, 2007

Stage 2 - Prioritising criteria for success



In empowerment evaluation this is done through a voting system; equal weight is given to all participants. Each participant is given a set number of sticky dots (number dependent on the number of criteria to vote on, but usually 5 – 10) and each participant is asked to stick their dots next to their priority criteria – they can distribute the dots across the criteria or if they so feel put all the dots against just one. The participants come up to the flip chart and vote together, this again allows participants to think about the views of others on the subject. The evaluator then counts the dots and orders the criteria by numbers of vote. There is often a discussion at this point.


It is interesting in a longitudinal evaluation to see the variation between the results on stage 2 . This can show that concerns that featured highly at the beginning of the project have now been addressed and are no longer a consideration. For example in a training project evaluation that East Oxford Action undertook, for the first evaluation “recruitment of people onto the training course” ranked very highly, this had totally disappeared by the end evaluation workshop. Through the evaluation process however, the importance of recruitment at the beginning had been captured and so could be learnt from for future project planning.

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