Terminology

Activities: Behaviors that are undertaken in order to fulfill a program’s goals and objectives.

Agreements: Agreements summarize the procedures and clarify roles and responsibilities among those who will execute the evaluation plan.

Bias: the result of errors in data collection when one outcome or answer is selected or encouraged over others.

Data: documented information or evidence (may be collected about programs, program services, or participants).

Data collection plan: document describing procedures to be used to gather the evaluation data.

Dissemination: Dissemination is the process of communicating either the procedures or the lessons learned from an evaluation to relevant audiences in a timely, unbiased, and consistent fashion

Effectiveness: The degree to which the goals and objectives of a service or program are successfully met.

Efficiency: The ability to produce a desired result using minimal resources.

Evaluation: The systematic (orderly) collection of information about the characteristics, activities, and outcomes of services or programs to assess the extent to which objectives have been achieved, identify needed improvements, and/or make decisions about future programming.

Feedback: Feedback is the communication that occurs among all parties involved in the evaluation.

Indicator: specific, observable, measurable characteristics or changes that show the progress a program is making toward achieving a specified outcome.

Inputs: Tangible or intangible resources that stakeholders supply, which make program activities possible. Examples of intangible resources include time, expertise, and infrastructure. Examples of tangible resources include money, personnel, and materials.

Methods: The methods for an evaluation are drawn from scientific research options; particularly those developed in the social, behavioral, and health sciences.

Multivariate Analysis: The observation and analysis of more than one statistical variable at a time.

Outcomes: The larger benefits for society as a whole from program activities. Outcomes can be divided into short-term, intermediate and long-term, depending on how much time has passed since the program was implemented and the scale of change to the individual or society. Short-term outcomes may be referred to as “impacts.”

Outcomes Evaluation (also called Impact Evaluation): An evaluation of the results of a service or program. Outcomes may be measured for individual clients, a population, or a health care delivery system.

Outputs: The direct products of program activities. This can include the services and materials produced or disseminated as a result of the activity.

Process Evaluation: An evaluation of the ways in which services are delivered and activities are performed.

Program: used to describe the object of the evaluation, which could be any organized public health action. A program is an activity or set of activities intended to help achieve an outcome that benefits the public.

Quality: The extent to which a health or social service meets established professional standards and user expectations.

Questions: Questions establish boundaries for the evaluation by stating what aspects of the program will be addressed.

Recommendations: Recommendations are actions for consideration resulting from the evaluation.

Research: The process of gathering information to discover new knowledge, test theories, or establish truths.

Stakeholders: People who have an interest in a situation. Stakeholders represent three principle categories: those involved in program operations, those served or affected by the program, and primary users of the evaluation. These are also the specific persons that will receive the evaluation findings.

Unit Cost: The full cost of producing or delivering one unit of service (e.g., one hour of counseling). The average unit cost is the full cost of providing a service divided by the total number of service units delivered.

Uses: Uses are the specific ways in which information generated from the evaluation will be applied.

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