Stage 3 - Scoring performance

Having prioritised the criteria/actions the participants individually are asked to score the project's current performance against the criteria. Scoring is out of ten, with ten being perfect. They do this on their own on a piece of paper and then either they read out their votes and the evaluator marks them on to a scoring grid (see fig1) or they write them on the grid themselves. This approach helps stop people from being influenced by what the others are scoring. In this and in the writing down of criteria (stage 2) the evaluator encourages the participants not to think too hard, but to write down what comes easily to mind. Whilst the workshop members are having a tea break the evaluator totals the scores both by criteria and participant.

This element of the workshop can be seen as producing a quantifiable scoring of performance that over a longitudinal evaluation can be used to measure progress. However caution should be exercised in doing this, as it should with all similar surveys and as is made clear in Stage 4 of the evaluation. It is the experience of East Oxford Action that programmes which include capacity and social capital building often do not score as might be expected – i.e. approval ratings do not rise as problems are tackled. The reason for this is that in disadvantaged communities there are often low expectations. If through the programme one raises expectations then the scoring of performance may be affected adversely. For example in East Oxford there was at the beginning of the regeneration programme an important piece of open space which was used as a dumping ground for rubbish, and as an area for drug abuse. The regeneration programme transformed the open space into a pleasant park. However, with their expectations raised, local people would still complain about the occasional dropping of litter.