Process evaluation measures the actions of delivering the project/program and whether or not the planned strategies are being undertaken as they were intended [89, 90 ].
Process evaluation is an ongoing examination of:
These steps are from the RE-AIM framework (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance) which can be used when planning, evaluating and reporting the results of the project/program [90].
Adoption measures the number and proportion of settings, stakeholders and agencies involved with the project/program [89, 90]. This helps determine the level of involvement and types of resources that have been adopted by other organisations and communities [89, 90]. This is similar to reach; however, the focus is at an organisational level. By improving adoption, the project/program will reach more individuals [89 ].
Information that could be collected includes:
Reach is concerned with measuring the number and proportion of individual participants involved in your project/program [89, 90, 93]. It may also determine if your group is similar to the general population. This is known as representativeness [89, 90, 93 ].
Reach measures the success of your recruitment, marketing and retention strategies by focusing on whether the target group was aware, involved with and retained by your project/program [89]. For more information on improving the reach of your project/program, visit: Reach and marketing
Information that could be collected includes:
Reviewing the implementation process identifies whether there has been an effective or ineffective intervention and/or implementation process [90]. This can be analysed with individuals, organisations and the community [89, 93]. It is important to collect and analyse enough information to decide whether the project/program (or parts of it) could be repeated or taken up by others [23, 89, 93 ].
Information that could be collected includes:
The evaluation planning worksheet and the list of evaluation tools will be useful for keeping track of all the evaluation questions. This may need to be modified to meet your project/program evaluation goals.
evaluation planning worksheet
evaluation tools
It is important to continually evaluate and analyse as the project/program is being implemented. If the target group are not being reached, it is unrealistic to expect that the project /program will be effective or have a positive impact on the target group.
You may need to take active steps to improve the effectiveness of the project/program’s strategies by contacting those organisations and/or individuals not participating and/or follow up with those who were participating but are not any longer.
To accurately record process information, you will need a systematic monitoring, record keeping and documentation process for the project/program [16]. For suggested methods of collecting process information, visit: Process evaluation tools.