Estudio de Evaluabilidad: ¿Cuán preparado está un programa para la evaluación?

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An Action Research Collaboration to Promote Mental Wellbeing Among Men of Color

Background: Action research seeks to affect social change by prioritizing partnership and participation. This approach fosters the equitable engagement of marginalized populations in research. In Boston, the marginalization of men of color has resulted in inequitable outcomes in education, employment, health, and other indicators of wellbeing. Objectives: A Boston-based coalition of community organizations was tasked with developing an action plan to promote mental wellbeing among men of color. The coalition engaged in action research to identify the individual, organizational, and community-level factors that contribute to mental wellbeing. Methods: The coalition collected 174 surveys and facilitated focus groups with 55 men. The planning process created valuable opportunities for relationship building and partnership development. Lessons Learned: The planning process reinforced the importance of proactive community engagement, continuous capacity building, inclusive data collection, and cross-sector collaboration.    Conclusions: Centering lived experience resulted in community-driven, culturally sensitive solutions to promote mental wellbeing among men of color

An Action Research Collaboration to Promote Mental Wellbeing Among Men of Color

Background: Action research seeks to affect social change by prioritizing partnership and participation. This approach fosters the equitable engagement of marginalized populations in research. In Boston, the marginalization of men of color has resulted in inequitable outcomes in education, employment, health, and other indicators of wellbeing. Objectives: A Boston-based coalition of community organizations was tasked with developing an action plan to promote mental wellbeing among men of color. The coalition engaged in action research to identify the individual, organizational, and community-level factors that contribute to mental wellbeing. Methods: The coalition collected 174 surveys and facilitated focus groups with 55 men. The planning process created valuable opportunities for relationship building and partnership development. Lessons Learned: The planning process reinforced the importance of proactive community engagement, continuous capacity building, inclusive data collection, and cross-sector collaboration.    Conclusions: Centering lived experience resulted in community-driven, culturally sensitive solutions to promote mental wellbeing among men of color

Youth Engagement in Electoral Activities: A Collaborative Evaluation of a Civic Education Project

Youth civic engagement is recognized as an essential component necessary for the preservation of democratic practices; however, inadequate levels of civic participation persist among young people. Past research has shown that young people are more likely to participate in politics when they are informed. We present survey data collected from middle and high school students during a collaborative evaluation of a civic education project. A total of 4492 students participated in the pre-survey, and 3180 students participated in the post-survey. The aim of this part of the evaluation was to explore students’ civic engagement before and after the infusion of civic education into the curriculum. We discuss reasons hindering students’ intent to vote, their satisfaction level with the 2008 presidential election, and how students planned to become involved in the 2012 presidential election. The results of the post-survey show an increase in students registered to vote and students’ intent to register to vote after the infusion of civic education into the curriculum. The findings suggest that civic education seems to positively influence students’ political behavior

Design and Validation of an Evaluation Checklist for Organizational Readiness for Evaluation Capacity Development

Evaluation capacity development (ECD) has been acknowledged as a system of processes to help organizations achieve sustainable evaluation practice. Examining the existing evaluation capacity of an organization before starting an ECD process is necessary and will increase the possibilities of success, determined by the establishment or strengthening of an evaluation system into the organization. In response to this need, this study involved the designing of the Organizational Readiness for Evaluation Capacity Development (ORECD) checklist and its initial validation, using a mixed method research design. The study was conducted in four phases, including: (a) the design of the ORECD checklist based on a review of the literature; (b) a review of the ORECD checklist by five experts to obtain face and content validity evidences, with emphasis on relevance and clarity of the items and how well the items fit the corresponding component; (c) a pretesting about the appropriateness of the wording of the items and format of the ORECD checklist by a sample of doctoral graduate students with formal training in evaluation and professional evaluators; and (d) a field study with 32 nonprofit organizations to determine the utility and benefits of using the ORECD checklist and potential improvements to the instrument. This phase generated information about the psychometric properties as well as consequential validity evidence. Findings indicated that the ORECD checklist has great potential to determine the readiness of an organization to develop evaluation capacity, as demonstrated by the feedback received from various groups of participants, establishing face, content, and consequential validity. Results from the psychometric analysis showed correlations that, for the most part, suggested that the components are measuring aspects of the same construct. In addition, the alpha for most of the components supported the reliability of the ORECD checklist. The two components with alphas close to but below .70 required modifications in order to improve their reliability. Also, it was necessary to modify or reword some of the items. Ongoing efforts should provide information about how the changes made to the ORECD checklist are working and additional validity evidences as the one that can be obtained through factor analysis. This will allow the exploration of the underlying structure of the ORECD checklist and its components. It is expected that the ORECD checklist can be a contribution to the body of literature about ECD helping to address organizational readiness in order to support and sustain the development of evaluation capacity within organizations

An Action Research Collaboration to Promote Mental Wellbeing Among Men of Color

Background: Action research seeks to affect social change by prioritizing partnership and participation. This approach fosters the equitable engagement of marginalized populations in research. In Boston, the marginalization of men of color has resulted in inequitable outcomes in education, employment, health, and other indicators of wellbeing. Objectives: A Boston-based coalition of community organizations was tasked with developing an action plan to promote mental wellbeing among men of color. The coalition engaged in action research to identify the individual, organizational, and community-level factors that contribute to mental wellbeing. Methods: The coalition collected 174 surveys and facilitated focus groups with 55 men. The planning process created valuable opportunities for relationship building and partnership development. Lessons Learned: The planning process reinforced the importance of proactive community engagement, continuous capacity building, inclusive data collection, and cross-sector collaboration. Conclusions: Centering lived experience resulted in community-driven, culturally sensitive solutions to promote mental wellbeing among men of color

An Action Research Collaboration to Promote Mental Wellbeing Among Men of Color

Background: Action research seeks to affect social change by prioritizing partnership and participation. This approach fosters the equitable engagement of marginalized populations in research. In Boston, the marginalization of men of color has resulted in inequitable outcomes in education, employment, health, and other indicators of wellbeing. Objectives: A Boston-based coalition of community organizations was tasked with developing an action plan to promote mental wellbeing among men of color. The coalition engaged in action research to identify the individual, organizational, and community-level factors that contribute to mental wellbeing. Methods: The coalition collected 174 surveys and facilitated focus groups with 55 men. The planning process created valuable opportunities for relationship building and partnership development. Lessons Learned: The planning process reinforced the importance of proactive community engagement, continuous capacity building, inclusive data collection, and cross-sector collaboration. Conclusions: Centering lived experience resulted in community-driven, culturally sensitive solutions to promote mental wellbeing among men of color

Building Capacity to Create Community Change (BC4): A Model to Support Successful Program Planning and Implementation

Community-based interventions (CBIs) are increasingly used to address health problems and are usually implemented by organizations outside and/or inside the community. CBIs are complex and organizations need to have, or be able to build the capacity needed to implement CBIs effectively. The importance of organizational capacity building is well established in the literature, but less attention is focused on how to build capacity, particularly for prevention-focused and mental health CBIs. As part of the longitudinal process evaluation of a national initiative to promote the mental health and wellbeing of men and boys in the United States, this study developed a capacity-building model to identify areas and associated factors that were integral to grantee organizations’ ability to build capacity to create change in their communities. The findings identified five domains used to comprise the Building Capacity to Create Community Change model, which contributed to organizational capacity building and as a result, implementation progress: Administrative Support, Leadership, Vision and Mission, Partnership Development, and Community Engagement. Strength in each domain increased grantees’ capacity to impact the lives of participants and progress towards the goal of creating community change