Sources of Evaluation Data
Good evaluation questions provide guidance about possible sources of evaluation data. Depending on the nature of the question and the resources available, multiple sources might be used:

People inside the training/educational program:

• Trainers
• Trainees
• Support staff
• Program designers

People outside of the training/educational program:

• Learners
• Mentees
• Supervisors
• Colleagues

Records:

• Grades and test scores or other measures of performance
• Databases maintained by units or organizations
• Paper records, such as IRB applications, requests for programs, etc.
• Access to resources, such as visits to websites, requests for documents, telephone logs, etc.

Institutional Indicators

• Climate surveys
• Institutional surveys of graduates
• Citations
• Compliance reviews and audits

EXAMPLE

In the previous step we wrote a few example evaluation questions for each objective. In order to evaluate the first objective—training graduate students as research mentors—we decided to ask those involved if the graduate students appeared confident establishing expectations, building trust and resolving conflict with their mentees.

In order to evaluate the second objective—guiding graduate student to develop a mentoring philosophy—we decided to see if their writing assignments reflected the principles underlying the program.

Now we are going to determine the sources of data we could use to answer these questions. Note that for the first evaluation question there are two sources of data: the graduate students and their mentees.

1. Program participants and mentees

 

2. Program participants

See Example 1 in the Resources menu at the right for this example evaluation plan completed thus far.

WRITE YOUR OWN SOURCES OF EVALUATION DATA

In your Evaluation Planning Tool enter your sources of evaluation data in column 5.

Do you need more information? Check out the RESOURCES menu at the right.