Evaluation

Monitor and evaluate to make your communications effective

Building in monitoring and evaluation processes allows you to measure reactions from your target audiences, and learn any outcomes from your campaign or communications product.

Monitoring

You can monitor how effective your campaign has been by collecting feedback from disabled people:

Focus groups can produce qualitative information from disabled people (include a range of impairments, ages and ethnic groups.
Accessible forms allow people to give feedback on services, publications, websites and events.

Consider asking whether the respondents fit the legal definition of disability.

Evaluation

This is essential to understanding the effectiveness of your communication strategies. It measures their impact, giving an understanding of what works well and identifying areas where improvement is needed.

There are two types of evaluation: impact evaluation and process evaluation.

Impact evaluation measures awareness, attitudes or behaviour of target audience.

For example, impact evaluation could consider whether segments of a target audience were aware of a particular campaign. Increased take-up of services by disabled people after a campaign publicising those services would also help you evaluate its impact, as could media coverage, for example in disability publications.

Process evaluation measures how well the communications were delivered, for example whether they were they on time and within budget.

For example, process evaluation could examine whether budget setting was effective in relation to non-text formats, such as audiotape or British Sign Language DVDs.

What you can do

Involve disabled people in your monitoring and evaluation.
Run focus groups that include disabled people.
Provide accessible forms

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Page last reviewed: 30 March 2011