Evaluation

CASA Effectiveness Manual

This section provides suggestions to programs about how to use the information collected for reports and to evaluate program effectiveness. These reports will provide programs with valuable information to use for grant proposals, board presentations, and volunteer training.

Descriptive Information:
All programs should have current information describing the children they are serving and the volunteer activities. Programs will be able to report (from Director’s Tracking Form) for example, the number of children in each placement type, number of children placed with siblings average number of monthly contacts by volunteers and so forth. Programs may then compare their numbers to state or national data if it is available.

Evaluating Program Goals:
All programs should set annual program goals. A form is provided on the following page for programs to list their annual goals. Sample program goals have been provided throughout the manual At the end of the year programs should evaluate the achievement of the goals they set. Most of the information needed to determine goal achievement will be on the Director’s Tracking Forms.

Comparing Over Time:
Another way to use the information in an annual report is to compare the information on the Director’s Tracking Form for the first month of the year (say January) and the last month of the year. (say December) It is best to use percentages when making comparisons. For example it would be easy to report the percent of children in each placement type at the beginning of the year compared to the end of the year. Or the percentage of children placed within 30 miles of home and with siblings at the beginning of the year compared to the end of the year. And so forth for each item on the form.

Surveys:
The surveys provide valuable feedback to programs. First compile the information you will use in your reports by tallying the number of people who responded to each question and also the number of individual answers to each question. For example, 46 people may have answered question 1. Of the 46 who responded, 22 strongly agree, 10 agree, 8 disagree, and 6 strongly disagree. Percentage refers to the number of people who responded the same way to each question. To determine percentage; percent = number of people who circled for example "agree" / total number of people who responded to the question. So using the example 10 / 46 = about 22% of the people who responded circled agree to question 1.

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