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Developing and Validating Survey Instruments webinar slides

This document is a PDF of the slides from EvaluATE’s “Developing and Validating Survey Instruments” webinar, conducted May 18, 2011.

You know your project’s goals. And you know you need to measure your progress toward reaching them. You probably even know whether a survey questionnaire would help you measure that progress. But what sort of questions belong on a survey instrument? And how should they be worded? This webinar will explain the questionnaire development process, using ATE survey work as examples. Along with the EvaluATE team, Candiya Mann will showcase her work and we’ll feature Wayne Welch as a discussant, sharing his process of establishing face and content validity with a method that is practical for most ATE projects and centers. Both examples emphasize the importance of thinking from a measurement perspective to get more trustworthy data.

Full Record

http://evalu-ate.net/downloads/Instrument%20Design%20webinar%20SLIDES.pdf
Developing and Validating Survey Instruments webinar handout

This is a 1-page handout from EvaluATE’s “Developing and Validating Survey Instruments” webinar, conducted May 18, 2011.

You know your project’s goals. And you know you need to measure your progress toward reaching them. You probably even know whether a survey questionnaire would help you measure that progress. But what sort of questions belong on a survey instrument? And how should they be worded? This webinar will explain the questionnaire development process, using ATE survey work as examples. Along with the EvaluATE team, Candiya Mann will showcase her work and we’ll feature Wayne Welch as a discussant, sharing his process of establishing face and content validity with a method that is practical for most ATE projects and centers. Both examples emphasize the importance of thinking from a measurement perspective to get more trustworthy data.

Full Record

http://evalu-ate.net/downloads/instrument-design-webinar-handout.pdf
Spring 2011 Conduit Newsletter

Wayne Welch outlines steps toward instrument validation, we introduce methods for locating preexisting valid instrument, and Helen Sullivan and Amy Gullickson discuss use of a Project Mapping Template.

Full Record

http://evalu-ate.net/downloads/EvaluATE%20Spring%202011.pdf
Project Mapping Template

Helen Sullivan, of the Convergence Technology Center, shared this resource as a tool to map out a project’s activities. She says, “Managing the work of a project or center can be overwhelming with all the activities to coordinate. A project plan template provides a straightforward solution to the challenge. At Convergence Technology Center, our project plan helps us stay on top of our goals and objectives, show evidence of activities and outcomes, develop our yearly report, and gather information for grant proposals or renewals.

“We use Excel to create our project plan, with a separate spreadsheet for each goal. An excerpt from our 2009 project map appears below. First, we explicitly state Goal 2 and Objective A. Then each activity gets a row on the map, starting with a description (Activity); the people working on it, with the leader’s name underlined (Prime); specific deliverable(s) and what constitutes evidence of success (Deliverables/Evidence); when to expect and gather evidence and deliverables (Timeline); insights and information to discuss at project review meetings (Comments/Suggestions); and a record of progress by quarter (Status).”

Amy Gullickson, who studied the Center, added this about the map’s relationship to evaluation, “Involving your staff, partners, and evaluators in creating (and/or updating) the project plan generates a shared understanding about the purpose and process of your work and the evidence you need to collect for yourselves and your funders. As a small or large group, you can have a conversation about when that evidence is likely to show up, what kind of tools you’ll need to capture the information, and who is responsible for collecting it.”

Full Record

http://evalu-ate.org/downloads/resources/CTCTemplateForConduit_(1)1.xlsx
Claims + Evidence: Assessing ATE Grant Outcomes Webinar

This webinar took place Wednesday March 16, 2011 | 1-2:30 PM EDT.

The 2010 ATE program solicitation says that PIs “should establish claims as to the project’s effectiveness, and the evaluative activities should provide evidence on the extent to which the claims are realized.” This webinar will walk ATE evaluators and PIs through a five-step process, which includes

* identifying claims worthy of evaluative investigation
* defining how to measure impact in meaningful, yet practical ways
* determining how to make a strong case that the ATE project caused the observed impact
* setting up performance standards to aid in interpreting evaluation results

In this free, 90-minute webinar we discussed guidance about how to move your evaluation beyond body counts, self-assessment, and satisfaction to genuine evaluation of impact and effectiveness.

Get the handout at evalu-ate.org/resources and search “claims”

Register for future webinars at evalu-ate.org/events

Full Record

http://vimeo.com/21245222