Why evaluation?

Suppose you are working in a human service agency. At some point in the course of your work, questions may come to your mind about the appropriateness of your service, its effec­tiveness, why some people like or benefit from it and others do not, how it can be improved, what sort of workload a service provider can carry and what the cost of delivering the ser­vice is. Consumers and administrators of your service may ask you similar questions. You can obtain answers to these questions in a number of ways, ranging from gathering anecdotal evidence to undertaking a systematic study, adhering to the principles of scientific enquiry.

Evaluation methodology, which (as mentioned) is based upon research methodology, is one way of finding answers to such questions.

You may come across professionals with differing attitudes towards evaluation. Some attach immense importance to it, while others consider it to be not as important because they think of themselves as solely the providers of a service. Whether or not you become involved in evaluating your practice is dependent upon your interest in examining the practice and upon the demands placed on you by others. However, as a beginner in research methodology, you need to be aware of the importance of evaluation and of the links between it and research methodology. Also, you need to appreciate the significance of evaluation in critically examin­ing a practice for greater efficiency and effectiveness. Even as a service provider you need to be familiar with how your clinical skills can benefit from evaluation processes. Specifically:

• You have a professional and ethical responsibility to provide a good quality of service to your clients. To ensure its effectiveness and efficiency, you need to assess your practice. Knowledge of evaluation research will help you to assess your practice objectively or help you to communi­cate with an evaluator knowledgeably and professionally about evaluation issues.
• While you, as a professional, have an obligation to provide an effective service to your clients, your clients, on the other hand, have a right to know the quality of the service they are receiv­ing from you. In this age of consumerism, your clients can demand evidence of the quality of your service. In the modern era of consumerism, the emphasis is not only on providing a serv­ice but also on how well it is delivered to consumers. in most service professions the concept of so-called evidence-based practice is growing at a very rapid rate. (see also the section on evidence-based practice in chapter 1.)
• When you are dependent upon outside funding for providing a service, you usually need to provide evidence of the effectiveness of your service for renewal of funding. Nowadays almost every funding body uses evaluation reports as the basis of funding decisions. Quite often an evaluation report from an independent evaluator is required. For effective communication with an outside evaluator, knowledge of evaluation will go a long way.
• Because of the paucity of resources and a greater emphasis on economic rationalism nowadays, there is a growing demand on service providers to demonstrate that the service they are providing is worth the expenditure, and people are getting value for money. Critical examination through evaluation of your service will help you to demonstrate the worth and value of your service.
• How do consumers view your service? What do the consumers of your service feel about it? What do they see as the positive aspects of your service? What, in their opinion, are the nega­tive aspects? How can your service be improved? is your service really helping those for whom it was designed? Is it achieving its objectives? In what ways is it benefiting your clients? To answer such questions you need to evaluate your practice.
• How expensive is your service? What is the cost of providing the service to clients? is this cost justified? Is the money being well spent?

In the final two points above are some of the questions that you need to answer as a service provider. Skills in evaluation research can help you to answer these questions with greater confidence, objectivity and validity.

Source: Kumar Ranjit (2012), Research methodology: a step-by-step guide for beginners, SAGE Publications Ltd; Third edition.