Section 4: Program Evaluation in Six Steps

Related Pages
Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health - Engage Stakeholders, Describe the Program, Focus Evaluation Design, Gather Credible Evidence, Justify Conclusions, Ensure Use and Share Lessons

CDC’s Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health has six connected steps that can be used as a starting point to tailor an evaluation for a particular public health effort at a particular point in time (Figure 2).1 It also has a set of standards that can be used to assess the overall quality of evaluation activities.

  • The first three steps can be done in any order and repeated multiple times.
  • They often provide the foundation for the later three steps.
  • You can tailor each step to meet your needs.

Step 1. Engage Stakeholders

Stakeholders are people or organizations that are invested in your program, are interested in the results of the evaluation, or have an interest in what will be done with the results. When selecting stakeholders, identify people or organizations that are:

  • Affected by the intervention (e.g., the target population).
  • Involved in implementing or conducting the evaluation.
  • Potential users of the evaluation results (e.g., program staff, partners, program participants, community groups, elected officials).

The CDC Program Evaluation Framework Checklist for Step 1 can guide you through this process.

2. Describe the Program

Before you can evaluate your program or intervention, you must be able to clearly describe its purpose, activities, and components, as well as the outcomes it is intended to achieve in the short-, medium-, and long-term. One way to describe your program is to develop a logic model. A logic model is a graphic depiction that presents the relationships between your intervention’s activities and its intended effects. Developing a logic model pdf icon[PDF – 216 KB] before you start your evaluation will help you define your goals and outcomes and measure the impact of the intervention correctly.

The CDC Program Evaluation Framework Checklist for Step 2 can guide you through this process.

3. Focus the Evaluation Design

Focusing on your evaluation design will help you identify the ultimate goal of your evaluation and the steps needed to achieve it. Your plan should anticipate the intended uses of your findings and create a strategy that ensures that your evaluation will be useful, feasible, ethical, and accurate.

Standard components of an evaluation plan include the following:

  • Key evaluation questions.
  • Description of the target population.
  • Description of the program or intervention.
  • Description of the evaluation methodology.
  • Description of how the evaluation findings will be used.

The following resources can guide you through this process:

4. Gather Credible Evidence

You will need to collect accurate and adequate evidence to support your evaluation results and the recommendations that follow. Conclusions and recommendations that are based on credible evidence will be viewed as trustworthy by the evaluation’s primary users and as believable and relevant by stakeholders. A stakeholder’s determination of the credibility of the evidence will depend on factors such as the questions asked, the information sources used, the conditions of data collection, the reliability of the measurement, the validity of the interpretations, and the quality control procedures.

When stakeholders help develop the data collection and analysis methods, they may be more likely to accept the evaluation’s conclusions and act on its recommendations.2,3 You can strengthen your evidence by using multiple procedures for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data and by encouraging stakeholders to help you define questions and collect data.

The following resources can guide you through this process:

5. Justify Conclusions

Stakeholders must believe that your conclusions are trustworthy before they will use your evaluation results with confidence. To reach conclusions that are well-substantiated and justified, review your evaluation results from the perspectives of many different stakeholders.

To justify conclusions based on evidence consider the following:

  • Standards: Stakeholders’ perspectives and values about the program are considered while developing conclusions.
  • Analysis and Synthesis: Credible methods are used to analyze and summarize the evaluation findings.
  • Interpretation: Efforts are made to discover what the findings mean and to understand what their practical significance is to stakeholders.
  • Judgment: Stakeholders use the available evidence, including the results of the evaluation, to make statements about the merit, worth, or significance of an intervention.
  • Recommendations: All recommendations that result from the evaluation should keep the stakeholders’ values in mind and be backed by sufficient evidence.

The CDC Program Evaluation Framework: Justifying Conclusions pdf icon[PDF – 14 KB] can guide you through this process.

6. Ensure Use and Share Lessons Learned

Share the key findings from your evaluation with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that the evaluation achieves its purpose to enhance your intervention and improve vision and eye health.

Recommendations for ways to ensure the use of your results and share lessons learned include the following:

  • Design your evaluation to specifically meet the needs of your stakeholders.
  • Provide continuous feedback to stakeholders on your findings, interpretations, and decisions that might affect the likelihood of use.
  • Schedule follow-up meetings with intended users to promote the transfer of evaluation conclusions into actions or decisions.
  • Share the procedures used and lessons learned from your evaluation with your stakeholders through tailored communication strategies that will meet their needs.

Common Dissemination Tools:

  • Peer-reviewed publications.
  • Presentations at national conferences and meetings.
  • Reports.
  • Issue or policy briefs.
  • Press releases.
  • Infographics.
  • Dashboards.
  • Success stories.

The following resources can guide you through this process:

Section below provides two examples of how the evaluation framework could be applied to a vision and eye health intervention.

Evaluation Step Activities
Example 1. Use of Telemedicine to Improve Access to Eye Care for People at High-risk of Glaucoma
1. Engage Stakeholders Identified and engaged glaucoma specialists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and optometrists at two Walmart Vision Centers.
2. Describe the Program Implemented a community eye health education and screening program that used telemedicine to screen people at high risk of glaucoma.
3. Focus the Evaluation Design Primary evaluation question: Is the intervention effective in screening people at high risk of glaucoma?

Primary evaluation metric: Number of people at high risk who are screened for glaucoma.
4. Gather Credible Evidence Collected data from participant surveys, site visit interviews, and patient medical records.
5. Justify Conclusions Used credible analysis methods to turn collected data into meaningful, useful, and accessible information.
6. Ensure Use and Share Lessons Learned Shared evaluation results in a peer-reviewed publication.4
Evaluation Step Activities
Example 2. Use of Smart Technologies and Telemedicine to Improve Screening Rates Among People at High-risk of Diabetic Retinopathy
1. Engage Stakeholders Identified and engaged primary care providers at community health centers across Virginia.
2. Describe the Program Implemented a primary care screening program that used smart technology and telemedicine to screen people at high risk of diabetic retinopathy.
3. Focus the Evaluation Design Primary evaluation question: Is the intervention effective in increasing screening rates among people at high risk of diabetic retinopathy?

Primary evaluation metrics: Number of people at high risk who are screened for diabetic retinopathy.
4. Gather Credible Evidence Collected data from participant surveys, site visit interviews, and patient records.
5. Justify Conclusions Used credible analysis methods to turn collected data into meaningful, useful, and accessible information.
6. Ensure Use and Share Lessons Learned Shared evaluation results with stakeholders and used the results to enhance the intervention.

CDC’s Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health provides a practical approach for conducting evaluations. Use the information and resources in this section of the toolkit to better understand the steps and standards used in the framework, then apply the framework to your vision and eye health interventions.

Additional Links
Top of Page
Page last reviewed: February 12, 2020
Content source: Division of Diabetes Translation, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion