Current Projects

Evaluation training

SHORE and Whariki provide evaluation training for public health workers throughout New Zealand.  This includes general community and one-on-one workplace specific workshops, along with a consultation service for public health and health promotion providers. 

Initial funding by the Ministry of Health to run one two-day and one five-day evaluation course for Auckland/Northland region public health and health promotion workers in 2005 has expanded to five three-day Easy Evaluation workshops and one advanced five-day Short Course, to meet increasing demand.  The researchers on the evaluation team are Pauline Dickinson, Jeffery Adams, Wendy Henwood, Sarah Greenaway, Lanuola Asiasiga and Hector Kaiwai.

Pauline Dickinson, who leads the team, says “We have a really diverse and skilled team to deliver the training.  We complement each other with our different strengths – it is a delight working together.”

The idea of the three-day Easy Evaluation workshops is to give the public and community health workforce tools to improve the quality of programme and evaluation planning so that more effective responses to public health issues and delivery of public health services can be made.

“It is about building evaluation into projects, rather than seeing evaluation as something you do after the projects,” says Dickinson.

                    
Evaluation Training workshop - Taranaki 2007

“Participants say our work has put evaluation at the front of their work rather than being an add-on at the end.  This increases the chances of a project being able to meet it aims – to deliver what it sets out to do.”

The five-day course gives a more in-depth understanding of the theory and methods of evaluation, along with the practical tools of the ‘easy evaluation’ workshops.

“The workshops give participants more insight into the planning of a project; the tools they take away enable them to link activities more closely to outcomes, and to recognise the difference between outputs and outcomes.  They also become more aware of exploring the existing evidence base,” says Dickinson.

A wide range of organisations addressing a variety of public health issues have taken part in the workshops, with participants from DHBs, PHOs, Maori and Pacific providers and other NGOs.

SHORE and Whariki also provide individual and organisational planning and evaluation support, tailored to meet the requirements of the particular team, as well as additional easy evaluation workshops such as the four in 2007 customised for organisations providing Healthy Eating Healthy Action services.

The evaluation training programme was revised in April 2007 to make it more interactive and participatory – and feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive.  The workshop helped in “all aspects of programme design and evaluation…[it] makes everything clear”, said one participant; another noted how “a lot of things now fit into place”; and a third spoke of learning “a lot of new things about evaluation: I am looking forward to putting my new knowledge into practice.”

In 2007 easy evaluation workshops were held in Rotorua, Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland and New Plymouth.  Designed for 20 participants, numbers can stretch to up to 30 participants to try to meet the demand, says Dickinson.

“Our work has a very good reputation – the feedback from workshops is overwhelmingly positive, and the requests for more workshops and follow-up evaluation sessions keep coming in.”

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