Evaluations are systematic and objective assessments of the effectiveness, efficiency, and appropriateness of your programs (e.g., interventions, randomized trials, marketing campaigns).  The results of an evaluation can provide you with a clear understanding of program performance, and often indicate how they can be improved or refined.  Results are indispensable for funders because they yield valuable information about the worth of programs, thus enabling informed decisions about the proper allocation of resources.  Our evaluation services include outcome/impact assessments, needs assessments, implementation assessments, and cost-efficiency assessments. 

Outcome & Impact Assessments.  Outcome assessments help to objectively determine whether you programs (interventions, services, merchandising strategies, etc.) effectively result in intended outcomes, e.g., attitudinal or behavioral changes.  Impact assessments, in contrast, are more rigorous because they require experimental designs to detect whether the program “causes” a change in behavior, attitudes, etc.  We can help select the most appropriate research design for your project (e.g., randomized field experiment, quasi-experimental, or non-experimental) and assist with the determination of whether your programs are indeed producing successful results.  Notably, some designs call for comparison of the relative effectiveness of two or more competing programs.

Needs Assessments.  Needs assessments are done to identify problems that need to be addressed, or to identify a need for a program, service, intervention, etc.  The results often indicate the extent and types of programs that are needed, what populations should be targeted, and to determine the nature of those populations’ needs for given services, interventions, products, etc. This is often a crucial step pior to the design of a program, and is relevant for established programs due to situations

Implementation Assessments.  It is often very beneficial to objectively verify whether your program (intervention, service, etc.) has been properly administered and targeted, that a program has been delivered as intended, whether the program is appropriate to those receiving it, and whether those to whom the program recipients are satisfied or perceive the program as beneficial or informative. Beyond only evaluated these factors, we can assist with setting up program monitoring systems, which are intended to provide continual assessments of program implementation.

Cost-Efficiency Assessments.  Programs that produce more desired outcomes with limited budgets are clearly preferable to those that produce fewer desired outcomes with the same budget.  We can conduct cost effectiveness analyses (CEA) to address the question: at what cost does a program produce expected benefits?  CEA will help you compare the costs and outcomes of different programs, and thus help identify the least costly alternative for achieving desired outcomes, or how to achieve the most desired outcomes within a given budget.  Cost benefit analyses (CBA), in contrast, involves comparisons of costs and benefits of two or more programs that have different goals.  This is accomplished by monetizing the goals (in dollar values) so that appropriate “apples to apples” comparisons are made.  “Breakeven” analyses are conducted prior to program implementation in order to determine how much impact is required for benefits to at least equal the costs.