Evaluation

What’s missing?
Idea – Initiative – Implementation – Next idea

The missing link is thorough evaluation. What went right, what went wrong, how could things be improved and enhanced to make the implementation of the idea even more effective.

Idea – Initiative – Implementation – Evaluation – Greater effectiveness

Evaluation is a catalyst for positive change, identifying areas for improvement, and helping to reach goals more effectively and efficiently.

It also helps communicate success to potential clients/partners/customers/funders by showing:
• what need is being met by the product or project
• how to improve design or implementation for greater effectiveness
• the value being added

Pye Tait has over twenty years’ experience as an independent evaluator for government departments, agencies and other public bodies. We offer both formative and summative evaluations, from needs analysis and process implementation to outcome and impact evaluations.

Evaluation can sometimes be a cold, distant process in which numbers and money gain a sometimes unwarranted dominance. But they are primarily a learning exercise. The research has to be sensitively and thoroughly conducted but the client has to be open to the findings – positive and negative.

Acting as a ‘critical friend’, we help to identify and develop new approaches and to develop insights into (often) expensive initiatives, and to quantify and articulate impact. We help develop a Theory of Change, for example, or apply the Kirkpatrick (New World) model or the COM-B model of Behaviour and Behaviour Change to explore the impact of such things as new funding schemes, training initiatives, or novel interventions.

Examples of successfully completed projects include:
• formative, summative and longitudinal evaluations of European Social Fund (ESF) activities;
• strategic and policy implementation reviews for government in England and Scotland;
• assessment and tracking of the impact of formative assessments of pilot training programmes;
• evaluations of policy implementation;
• assessments of careers’ advice and guidance initiatives;
• evaluations of assessment reforms; and
• experience researching the impact of professional development programmes.