Adolescent Weight Management Program Evaluation

Program Evaluation Assignment (FA21)
This assignment asks you to design a specific evaluation. See chapters 11, 12, and 13 of your text (included as attachments, Health Program Planning & Evaluation: A Practical, Systematic Approach for Community Health 5th Ed. By L. Michele Issel, Rebecca Wells & Mollie Williams) for guidance for this assignment. The following describes the expectations of this assignment.
1. Develop at least three evaluation questions for your proposed program (health program for overweight adolescents). Choose the most relevant questions you want to be answered by the impact of the program you have selected. Make sure your question addresses the 3 characteristics noted in your text: relevant data, the possibility of more than one answer, and that the question produces information that you and your stakeholder's value (see chapter 11 and page 278 for help with this section).
2. Using the figure and table on pages 308-309 of your text choose an evaluation design for your program.
3. Describe how you will implement this design.
4. Writing flow and content, grammar, spelling punctuation – should be free from errors, references, and APA format.
Evaluation Design
The design of your evaluation plan is important so that an external reader can follow along with the rationale and method of evaluation and be able to quickly understand the layout and intention of the evaluation charts and information.
There are three basic purposes of an evaluation plan: 1) Tracking the progress of the program’s implementation and execution of the work plan, 2) Monitoring or studying progress toward the program’s goals by measuring objectives, 3) Communicating results, value, or impact of the program’s achievements and successes.
Describing the evaluation design is important to the external reader so they can follow along with the purpose of the plan and be able to track the connections between goals, objectives, measures, and activities.
a. Describe the purpose and reason for writing an evaluation plan, tracking activities, and monitoring progress toward program goals, i.e. why is evaluation important to this program?
b. Identify and describe the planning framework and the reason or rationale; generalized strategic planning approach or specific Logic Model approach. The planning framework being used will influence the language of your evaluation design and plan. The program objectives are identified through the planning framework as either strategies or outcomes.
c. Provide a diagram to illustrate alignment of program objectives (strategies or outcomes) and key activities with program goals. Key activities are those that are considered critical to the success of the program and have a mid-term timeline of 6-12 months.
Plan to Measure Key Data
A plan to measure key data includes asking questions about implementation activities and monitoring program impact. Steps include the work of deciding what key data to measure, identifying specific and defined measurements, and then how to collect process activity data and objectives outcome and impact data and eventually when to collect it and who is responsible.
a. Asking Evaluation Questions:
Asking evaluation questions to identify key data is a tried and true approach.
Following are some examples of questions that will assist in identifying key metrics.
 What progress has been made toward program implementation?
 What progress has been made toward program impact?
 What is the impact of the program?
 What are opportunities to improve the program process for next year?
 What are opportunities to improve program results?
 What has been learned?
 What are our best practices?
Tracking Key Implementation Activities:
Program activities are actions and processes put into place to execute objectives. They help network leaders and stakeholders track the implementation activity of a program; “What progress has been made toward program implementation?” Implementation activities are typically identified within the program work plan. This data is often referred to as ‘outputs’. However, external readers are primarily interested in the key activities that are aligned with the program goals and considered critical to the success of the program and that will demonstrate the success of implementation.
Following is a list of examples of data for measuring implementation activities:
 Number of people served or participating
 Number of partners or stakeholders involved
 Implementation steps completed
 Number of resources addressing specific issues available
 Number of policy or regulation changes
 Certification and graduation rates
Monitoring Program Impact:
Program objectives are identified as either strategic objectives or outcomes depending on the selected planning framework. The data is often referred to as “achievements” or “outcomes”. External readers are primarily interested in the progress that demonstrates the impact of the program goals; E.g. “What progress has been made on program impact?” In other words, the program efforts are indeed moving toward the goals. It is this result of the effort that should be measured, i.e. the achievement. Monitoring program impact includes identifying expected results, such as improved health test results, changes in data for drug use, reduced use of the emergency room, satisfaction results, and increase knowledge based on test results.
Example 1
The six steps are:
STEP 1: State the Program Goal.
STEP 2: State the Program Objectives.
STEP 3: Write the Program Description.
STEP 4: List the Program Evaluation Questions.
STEP 5: List the Sources of Evaluation Data.
STEP 6: Describe the Methods of Data Collection.