Steps > Evaluating > A “How-to” Guide to Evaluations

1. What Do You Want to Know?

Think about why you’re evaluating and what your evaluation is going to measure.

If you’re trying to find out whether an initiative has been successful, see if you followed your mission statement and met your goals and objectives.

If you don’t have a mission statement or goals or objectives, decide with management and your employee committee how your organization will measure success.

For example, you can measure success by changes in:

• Health measures.

• Physical measures (e.g., strength, flexibility, waist circumference of employees).

• Psychological measures (e.g., employee morale, satisfaction levels, stress levels).

• Productivity measures (e.g., decrease in absenteeism rates, increased employee productivity).

• Economic measures (e.g., absenteeism,WCB costs, short-term disability claims).

2. Thinking About Employees

If you’re considering making improvements to the initiative, think about whether the initiative is still relevant and appropriate for employees. Find out if there are any barriers to participation in the program or to participation in physical activity during the workday.

3. Choosing an Evaluation Method

Decide on your evaluation method. Both measurable results (e.g., absenteeism rates or questionnaire responses) and descriptive results (e.g., one-on-one interviews or focus groups) can be used to evaluate. The method you choose will depend on the time and funding available and what you want to measure.

You will likely have to create or modify evaluation data collection tools. For example, you may create an employee survey or create questions to ask in a focus group.  Creating the tools you use may take some time and collaboration with your committee or managers.

4. Deciding How to Do the Evaluation

Plan when and where you will do your evaluation (and who will be evaluated). For more information, read the “Types of Evaluations” section on this website.

You may want to pilot test your evaluation (e.g., with members of the employee committee) before sending it out to employees. The employee committee may also want to evaluate the initiative’s planning process.

5. Doing the Evaluation

• Compare your results to baseline information (i.e., evaluation results from before the launch of your initiative). If you don’t have this information, save your evaluation results to compare with later results. You can also look at other information you may have, such as employee satisfaction survey results.

• Analyze and share meaningful and easy-to-understand results with management and employees.

• Evaluation results can be used to improve the current physical activity program and/or to develop new initiatives in future.

Find out More

• Evaluating Health Promotion Programs: A resource from the Health Communication Unit at the Centre for Health Promotion, University of Toronto.