Evaluation of change

Chapter 7 of this manual focuses on the evaluation of change. Since this is an important area that is usually feared and avoided, each participant could be responsible for a small project to monitor changes.

Exercise 10: Monitoring a day's training

Before the start of a day of training, an attempt could be made to develop a way of describing and assessing the day's activities:

What is the input?

How much preparation was involved?
How many hours were participants away from work?
Did it cost anything to hire a room?
What materials were specially prepared?

How can the process be described?

What information was imparted?
Which exercises were used?
How did participants interact?

What were the outputs and outcomes?

Which exercises were thought to be most useful? At the end of the day, was there an increase in confidence and intention to be involved in drug services? What new ideas were produced?

Sufficient information should be collected to write a report on the day, and to provide guidance on modifications that would be required if the training were to be repeated.

Monitoring skills could also be practiced by encouraging participants to offer a supervised monitoring service to a local team or individual. Alternatively, one participant might evaluate a project carried out by a fellow student.

Another exercise could be to identify people within, for example, a college, a university, or a factory, who have developed monitoring skills and would be happy to supervise a participant.