Evaluation Resources
Evaluation best practice and guidance
These two sets of best practice guidance on ethics and governance of service evaluation and patient and public involvement (PPI) in evaluation are aimed at anyone conducting service evaluations in health and social care. Ethics, governance and patient and public involvement are well established in research, yet often service evaluation isn’t considered from this perspective. This guidance, made up of several documents, was produced with the support of the former West of England Evaluation Strategy Group1.
1) Ethics and governance of service evaluation
These guidelines offer a framework for the governance of service evaluation and a code of good practice around ethics. They include links to practical examples of governance forms and checklists, and links to other useful sources of information and support around good practice in evaluation.
They were developed in consultation with stakeholders in universities and health organisations in the West of England, and with patient and public representatives.
A summary version of the guidelines is also available as a quick guide leaflet. The leaflet is tri-fold format. To print this, select ‘print on both sides’ and ‘flip on short edge’.
The following documents are resources that can be used alongside the full guidelines.
Quality assurance checklist
This checklist helps you to quality assure the planned approach to your evaluation. It helps to ensure the evaluation is proportionate, feasible, has a clear purpose which is linked to the organisation’s priorities, has an identified lead responsible for its delivery, has identified ethical issues and risks, and has utility and that plans are in place to share, and feedback to those who took part.
Evaluation risk register
This guide aims to help you identify some of risks that may affect the findings or timescales of your service evaluation.
Register of evaluation projects
A template for registering and tracking evaluation projects. A register provides a governance mechanism to ensure compliance with organisational policies and procedures; and can be useful for recording quality assurance and ethical review. It is a valuable source of information for the whole organisation, eliminating the risk of duplication of work and providing an easy overview of evaluation projects.
2) Patient and public involvement in evaluation
This leaflet offers an accessible guide to support you to embed patient and public involvement (PPI) in your evaluation activities and to ensure that public contributors really feel part of the evaluation team. It outlines an approach to PPI in evaluation that is meaningful, collaborative, supportive, developmental, effective, reflective and ethical.
The leaflet has been co-produced by patients, service users, public contributors, staff from voluntary, academic and statutory sectors, and the South West Evaluator Forum, with funding from the UK Evaluation Society. To print this, select ‘print on both sides’ and ‘flip on short edge’.
1 The Group was hosted by the former NIHR CLAHRC West to create a culture of evaluation in health and care across the region and support the spread of best practice. Its members included Bristol Health Partners, NHS organisations, the West of England Academic Health Science Network, the Avon Primary Care Research Collaborative, local universities and two public contributors. It was disbanded in 2018
