The 5 Step Approach to Evaluation: Designing and Evaluating Behaviour Change Interventions

Appendix 2: Evaluation report structure

Structure and content of the report

Section 1: Executive Summary

• Provide a brief overview of the project itself and it's overall aims.
• Summarise your main findings and recommendations from the evaluation

Section 2: Intervention description

• Explain why the project was required/funded. For example, was there a gap in provision?
• Describe the project, including costs, target group and aims.
• Describe how the project was intended to work, using your logic model (a diagram may be helpful). You should explain how your plans were informed by evidence of 'what works' elsewhere, show in detail how funds were therefore spent on the content of the project and set out the short, medium and long term outcomes that you expected to materialise.

Section 3: Evaluation questions and methods

• First set out what questions you were aiming to answer when you collected your evaluation data. E.g.
  • Inputs - How much did the intervention cost and how funds were spent?
  • Activities - Were activities carried out as planned? Was the target group reached? How many of the eligible group completed and what did activities consist of?
  • Short and Medium term (intermediate) outcomes - How many/what percentage of users changed attitudes or behaviour?
• Describe what data was collected (quantitative and/or qualitative) in order to answer each evaluation question and describe HOW the data was collected, for example by questionnaire, observation or through the use of standardised tests.
• Describe how the data was analysed (i.e. using EXCEL for numerical data or by identifying key themes in qualitatitive data)

Section 4: Findings /Results

Results should be set out to answer each of your research questions and must AT LEAST include the following results as a MINIMUM

• The cost/resources used and whether it was sufficient to run the activities?
• Which aspects of the project were evidence-based and which were not?
• How were users selected and was this effective at reaching the target group?
• Characteristics of the eligible group and eventual users (not just completers)
• Throughput - how many of the eligible group started, dropped out and completed and what were their characteristics?
• Were activities carried out as planned, what was their specific content and how many participated in them?
• How many made progress on different measures? Who did /did not and what were their characteristics?
• What were users views and experiences of the project and did they perceive it as contributing to change?

Section 5: Interpretation and recommendations

• Use your results to comment on the successes, challenges and lessons learned.
• Reflect on the relative contribution of your project in relation to other potential influences.
• Reflect on which parts of your logic model did and didn't work as predicted and consider why.
• List suggestions for modifying or supplementing the project in the future to better meet its aims (don't be afraid to comment on areas for improvement - this lends credibility to your evaluation)
• Conclusions MUST to be backed up by your results

TIP! Short chapter summaries are extremely helpful for readers who don't have time to read the full report or who want to get a sense of the evaluation before reading it in detail.

This summary was drawn from excellent guidance on what to include in an evaluation report which can be found here: http://www.uic.edu/depts/crwg/cwitguide/05_EvalGuide_STAGE3.pdf