One tool that could potentially provide you with a lot of useful information for program evaluation is conducting interviews with program participants. If you're looking for ways to evaluate programs, you should consider that conducting interviews is typically low cost and fairly easy to organize.
The following are five things you need to do when interviewing participants as part of your program evaluation efforts:
First, determine if interviews are going to contribute to program evaluation
Before you even get started, put some thought into whether interviews are going to be an effective tool for evaluating your unique program.
Do participants in your program have enough insight and oversight to provide constructive information about the program? Is it practical for you to conduct interviews? Can you count on program participants to provide unbiased and useful information?
These are the questions you need to think about before you proceed with program evaluation interviews.
Put a lot of time and effort into creating an interview script that addresses all pertinent issues
The most important step in conducting interviews for program evaluation is setting up a script.
You should have a standard script that you read to every interviewee so that you know you're handling each interview participant the same. Make sure the questions you're asking address all the important issues you need to analyze and evaluate to understand what improvements need to be made.
Be careful how you phrase interview questions
When you're putting together an interview script, one of the most important things you need to do is avoid phrasing questions so that they push interviewees toward a particular response.
Make sure you word your questions openly and don't give the interviewee the impression that you want to hear a particular answer.
Choose a diverse group of interview subjects
It's important that you're getting a wide variety of different perspectives in your interviews. Avoid selecting a fairly homogenous group of participants who are all likely to give similar answers. Try to select a group of interviewees randomly for the best and most impartial results.
Consider conducting interviews over the phone for the sake of convenience
Don't overlook the possibility of phone interviews. Phone interviews can be more convenient and also more comfortable for interview participants. Interviewees may be more inclined to give candid and honest answers to questions if they are not speaking with you in person and have the comfort of participating from their own homes.
Contact a company like evaluation center for more information and assistance.
Share13 November 2017
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