Module 6: HIV Prevention Evaluation for Native Communities

Goal of Module 6: To provide an evaluation framework for your HIV prevention intervention program.

In order to provide an effective HIV prevention intervention for Native people, you will need to ensure that a solid, culturally relevant evaluation plan informs your program from beginning to end. Program evaluation can help determine whether your HIV prevention intervention program is accomplishing what it set out to accomplish. This module includes an overview of helpful cultural components that effect evaluation, hands-on considerations, evaluation steps and tools, and avenues to share lessons learned to help you build an effective evaluation for your HIV prevention intervention program.

Contents 3b Describe the Program

This module helps you to create and conduct evaluation of your HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention program.

It includes information on:

1.


Key Concepts to Guide Evaluation

2.
Hands-On Considerations
3.
Evaluation Steps

Before you can decide which components of a program need to be evaluated, you need to know the components of that program. It is best to develop a brief description of your program that includes its purpose, activities, and capacity to meet its goals and objectives. Attention to the development of a short, easy to follow description early on will help ensure that:

(a) stakeholders have the same level of understanding about the program and
(b) stakeholders can make informed, strategic decisions about the focus of the evaluation.

How would you describe your program?

  • Create a brief description of your program.
  • What are the goals and objectives of the program?
  • Describe the implementation plan of the program (i.e. what activities are you going to do to reach your goals and objectives?).

Evaluation Questions
After defining the program, it is helpful for the stakeholders to define broad evaluation questions. This exercise begins the process of stakeholder engagement. Some examples of broad evaluation questions are:

  • Is our program accomplishing what we intended it to accomplish?
  • How well are we sticking to our implementation plan?
  • What is the ongoing personal impact of our program?
  • What is the ongoing community impact of our program?
  • What can we do to improve our program throughout its life-cycle?

Often, some of the evaluation questions are based on the goals and objectives of the program as they were written in a funding application. In other words, what do the people funding the program expect to see during or at the conclusion of activities as described in the request for proposal?
Remember: funders are stakeholders in the evaluation and their programmatic evaluation questions are very important. Examples of funder-stakeholder questions include:

  • Did participants of the HIV prevention education program change their risk behaviors? Did this behavior change last over time? When, if ever, did old behaviors surface?
  • Did our community awareness campaign influence HIV testing requests at the clinic? Who was reached? Did they get tested? Did they return for the results? Did they get referred into care?
  • Are physicians and medical personnel testing individuals who show symptoms of new HIV infection?

More examples of evaluation questions and stakeholder involvement can be found at the sites below:
http://www.evaluationtools.org/
http://www.rwjf.org/reports/grr/030220s.htm
http://www.nvaw.org/research/programeval.shtml
http://www.nonprofitresearch.org/newsletter1525/newsletter_show.htm?doc_id=26488

Exercise: Refining the Question

  • Look at the goals and objectives of your program. Create at least one evaluation question for each objective of your program.

  • If there are no current goals and objectives, review the section in Module 5: Conducting a Community Services Assessment on developing goals and objectives. Develop at least one goal and three objectives for your program. Then create at least one evaluation question for each objective.