Evaluating public engagement

Evaluation is a vital part of any public engagement activity – it helps you measure your success and impact, ensuring you meet the aim of your activity. Here are some of our top tips to help you master the evaluation process:

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.

What is an evaluation plan?

An evaluation plan is a critical tool that guides how you'll measure the success of your project. It typically includes four key elements: the aim, the project method, the marker of success, and the evaluation method.

Here’s how these elements work together:

Aim: What do you want to achieve?
Project Method: How will you achieve it?
Marker of Success: What will success look like?
Evaluation Method: How will you measure that success?

For example, you might say: “I want to [insert aim]. I will [project method] so that [marker of success] happens. I will detect the marker of success using [evaluation method].”

Why one big aim isn’t enough

Having one overarching aim, like “inspire the next generation,” can be tempting but is often ineffective. Such broad goals can be challenging to achieve and even harder to evaluate. If your project is relatively small, how would you prove that you've inspired the next generation?

The solution: multiple, specific outcomes

Instead of one large aim, break it down into smaller, more achievable outcomes. For instance, instead of aiming to "inspire the next generation," you might set the following desired outcomes:

For students to have increased science capital.
Increase their awareness of new career options.
The engagement is meaningful and memorable.

Each of these smaller outcomes contributes to the broader goal and is easier to evaluate.

Connecting outcomes to activities – the project method

To achieve these specific outcomes, think about the activities that will directly support them. For example:

By bringing researchers into schools, you may contribute to increasing science capital among the students.
By running workshops for 150 students, you might increase their awareness of new career options.
By providing enjoyable experiences, you ensure that the engagement is meaningful and memorable.

Measuring success

To determine if you’ve achieved your outcomes, you need a clear evaluation strategy:

If students hadn’t met a scientist before your visit, you’ve increased their science capital.
If their knowledge of career options increases after your activity, as shown by a quiz or show of hands, you've increased their understanding.
If schools invite you back or student self-report that they found the session enjoyable via a feedback form, it’s a sign that your session was both enjoyable and valuable.

By achieving these smaller outcomes, you can confidently argue that you’ve made progress toward your larger aim of inspiring the next generation.

The importance of planning your evaluation

Your aims should be aligned with outcomes that are both meaningful and measurable. Planning your evaluation method in advance is crucial to ensuring your project has the maximum impact.

Creating a planning triangle

If you’re struggling to define exactly what you want to achieve, creating a planning triangle can be a helpful exercise. A planning triangle organizes your project into three components: Activities, Outcomes, and Impact.

To turn this into an evaluation plan, identify markers of success for each outcome. Outcomes represent the directional changes you aim to create, such as improved literacy or reduced plastic bag usage. Determine what data you’ll need to track these changes—that’s your marker of success. If a marker is too difficult to identify, consider breaking down the outcome into smaller, more manageable parts, or acknowledge that some outcomes might be hard to prove.

For a step-by-step guide on how to create a planning triangle, follow the link provided here.

Need more help?

If you’d like more personalized guidance, the Public Engagement team is available for one-on-one consultations. You can book a chat with them here.