Outcomes-based evaluations help us define what we’re trying to accomplish

Spring is the time of year when we ask our early childhood community partners to help us measure the effectiveness of our outreach services or—said another way—evaluate the outcomes of our programs. Outcomes are what the participants will know or be able to do after participating in our programs. For example, one parent wrote, “I will be more patient when I read with my daughter. I’m usually anxious to be done. Now I’ll talk about the things she’s interested in in the book, and read the same book dozens of times if she wants.”

When we first learned about outcomes-based evaluations, years ago, we felt daunted by the need to create models that listed the resources, activities, outputs, and outcomes for all of our programs. But before long, we realized that it helps us define exactly what we hope to accomplish—what specific changes we hope to see in parents’ and providers’ knowledge, skills, or behaviors as a result of our efforts. Here’s an example of one childcare provider’s self-assessment: “I expected to be bored in your workshop. My director made me come, but it turned out to be fun and I got a ton of new ideas!”

These comments are outcome indicators or what you see, hear, and read that indicate whether you’re making progress toward your goal. Because these indicators are fun to read, we want to share some with you that have informed us, enlightened us, or made us smile this year.

One of the questions we ask childcare providers after an early literacy class is “name one thing that you will do differently.” Their answers are very instructive: “I’ll stop trying to make the children listen to books without interrupting me!” and “I’m no longer going to read books that I don’t like.”

Many caregivers gain knowledge of children’s language and literacy development from our programs. Sometimes the information they hear changes their behavior. For instance, after attending one of our programs, a caregiver said, “I thought that my children were really too young for storytime so I didn’t read to them. Now I will do it every day.” And, “I will introduce the babies to books sooner and more often!”

Childcare providers take our Early Words classes to fulfill their continuing education requirements for their registration or certification renewal. As one of them put it: “At first I was intimidated by the other professional I was assigned to work with in the training, not because of anything she did or said but because of my uncertainty in my abilities. Before long, we were sharing stories about our jobs and laughing together. Overall, taking the class made me feel very competent.”

Like your library, we gather endless output data—statistics on children/parents/caregivers served, books circulated and delivered, library cards issued, and programs offered. But these don’t usually focus on the program’s effectiveness. Outcomes-based evaluations measure the benefits of programs to end users. It’s true that the long lasting impact of any program can’t be assessed without using a randomized study of families who did not participate in the program, but that technique is too expensive and impractical for most library programs. Outcomes are more anecdotal reporting of specific improvements, but they are essential to improving the effectiveness of our services.

To help you create outcomes evaluations, always finish this sentence, “At the end of this program, participants will be able to __________.”

Gaining feedback from our customers can be exhilarating, too. “This series of classes has done more for me than you can ever imagine! I am confident that children’s lives will be enriched because I took this training!!!”

If you’d like to learn more about outcomes-based evaluations, here are some great books to get you started: Demonstrating Results by Rhea Joyce Rubin; Dynamic Youth Services through Outcome-Based Planning and Evaluation (both ALA Editions, both 2009) by Eliza Dresang; and Learning Environments for Young Children (ALA, 1998) by Sandra Feinberg, Joan F. Kuchner, and Sari Feldman.