It takes time to build evaluation capacity within an organization, especially if one is using a participatory process where all participants must have some understanding of the evaluation method, process, and goals. Evaluation is not research and should not be construed as such. The program evaluation is successful because We were able to free up a few hours a week for one staff person to coordinate the evaluation. We developed a time line and followed through on it. We used a participatory process throughout.
Participatory evaluation builds community ownership over the process and results.
Staff workloads are already heavy, and evaluation training and additional data collection were added to staff work loads with no increase in paid working hours. We were fortunate to have an outcome measurement tool for the children's improvements towards school readiness. This tool will be refined as we test it, but the development and testing obviously requires more time and staff resources than if a standardized measurement tool existed.