- Make a clear plan - When you are in the early planning stages of your public engagement activity, make sure that you consider how you will evaluate it. A clear plan will make your evaluation process seamless and stress free. Take the time to consider what you need to know to understand if you have met your aims and objectives, as well as how you will analyse the data you gather.
- Don’t leave it to the end - Evaluation is a constant process throughout the whole course of your public engagement activity. If something isn’t working, change it! If all your evaluation happens at the end of your project, you may miss out on useful feedback. For example, it can be useful to measure attitudes or knowledge levels before and after your activity to measure how effective it is.
- Make it fun and interactive - Consider your audience when planning how you will evaluate an activity. For example, children won’t want to fill out a lengthy survey but you could use stickers or counters to gather quantitative data, or post it notes or drawing pictures to gather qualitative data. Surveys for any audience should be kept as short as possible and include a mixture of multiple choice and open-ended questions. Audiences of all ages will enjoy and appreciate evaluation that is creative, fun and quick.
- Consider your methods - Quantitative or qualitative? Qualitative methods are brilliant for encouraging meaningful discussion and capturing detail. Meanwhile, quantitative methods can be quicker, allowing you to capture a larger sample. Ideally, your evaluation methods should be a mixture of quant and qual to ensure the data you collect is detailed and robust.
- Spread the word - You’ve completed your public engagement activity, you’ve analysed all your data but what next? What went really well? What have you learnt along the way and what might you do differently next time? All of this is really useful information that is helpful to you and others. A short report, blog or case study is a brilliant way of sharing your successes and top tips.
Read more information on evaluation and why it matters.
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