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Abstract: Process evaluation helps us to understand the planning process. This predominantly qualitative approach explains how and why decisions are made and activities undertaken. The focus includes feelings and perceptions of program staff. The evaluator's ability to interpret and longitudinally summarize the experience of program staff and community members is critical. Techniques discussed include participant observation, content analysis, situational analysis, in-house surveys, and interviews. By combining sources and methods, a fuller picture of the process is revealed.
What exactly is process evaluation? Is it really evaluation at all? The answers to these questions may be less straightforward than the questions themselves. Process evaluation, as an emerging area of evaluation research, is generally associated with qualitative research methods, though one might argue that a quantitative approach, as will be discussed, can also yield important insights.
We offer this definition of process evaluation developed by the Federal Bureau of Justice Administration:1
Process Evaluation focuses on how a program was implemented and operates. It identifies the procedures undertaken and the decisions made in developing the program. It describes how the program operates, the services it delivers, and the functions it carries out . . . However, by additionally documenting the program's development and operation, process evaluation assesses reasons for successful or unsuccessful performance, and provides information for potential replication [italics added].
The last sentence in this definition is at the heart of process evaluation's importance for Circles of Care (CoC). Process evaluation is a tool for recording and documenting salient ideas, concerns, activities, administrative and management structures, staffing patterns, products, and resources that emerge during three-year CoC planning grants. Unlike outcome evaluation, which often measures the results of a project's implementation against its programmatic projections, there are not necessarily a priori assumptions about what the planning process will look like.
Furthermore, as discussed in an earlier chapter on the life cycle of the evaluation process, there are stage-specific developmental activities occurring within the program. While the specific context will vary across projects, we may assume that there are common dynamics (e. g., Process, Development and Action Stages) that when understood can frame the experience and be helpful to participants and next generation planners.
In essence, process evaluation entails tracing the footsteps that CoC staff, as well...