I met my OE regional director this week and it was a wonderful chance to talk about the "big picture" and projects that are being conceived / acheived for the Midwest region through the efforts of One Economy.
One idea that he mentioned to me that has not been on my immediate radar as yet is keeping track of project outcome measures. Well, I guess I first need to figure out what measures make sense for me to track. As I mentioned in my last blog post I am not seeing much resources that are relevant to my project & community, so thought I would post what I've been doing to determine my outcome measures, and see if I can get some feedback from other OE VISTAs.
First I started with the AmeriCorps*VISTA quarterly report -- its asking us to track information like number of volunteers recruited & how many are baby boomers, dollar amount of funds donated / raised, number of computers installed in homes. Quarterly report is mandatory so makes sense to track everything relevant to my project that it asks for.
Next I went through the family survey / questionnaire available on the Beehive Network. Since my project is not installing desktop computers in individual family homes not all the questions are relevant but most of them were, like:
- if they had used a computer before
- what locations they used a computer & how often
- types of activities done on a computer
- if they ever accessed the internet before & what kinds of activities
I thought I could use these questions as outcome measures by turning things a bit around based on residents that start using the computer lab I'm setting up. How many starting using a computer, accessed the internet, searched for jobs online, got an e-mail address, etc. for the first time?
What other outcomes do you think are relevant to track for digital inclusion projects?
Tina Coles
Connected Communities
Kansas City, MO
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2 comments:
Hi Tina,
This is a very important subject for all of OE. We have no hard data on the outcomes of any of our programs in terms of our claim to improve people's lives. This is a more qualitative measure that requires a scheduled follow up questionaire with all of our access sites.
I suggest that you get with the national and regional managers of access and ask them what is being done. If you have an interest and can fit it creatively into your VAD, you can spearhead the effort by researching evaluation measures or talking to professional evaluators about what would be appropriate. Its pretty intuitive too, so you might want to write up what you think and ask for feedback.
For me, I can see the following questions making sense:
1. When using the Budget tool, I was able to (check all that apply)
-identify where I was wasting money
-save money on food bills
-save money on housing
-cut spending outside of my necessities
-share what i learned with others
2. I used the following tools under health (check all that apply)
-activity tracker
-BMI finder
-Calorie calculator
3. By using the health information I have improved the following habits (check all that apply)
-eat more fruits and vegetables
-monitor my blood pressure more regularly
-control my calorie intake
-Exercise more
-track my exercise
-etc.
You get my drift- tracking how each of the tools are used or implemented in the life.
Im not sure if there is a map of all the beehive tools, but it may be useful to create one so that you can be sure to address them all.
Ruqiyyah,
This is awesome feedback! Beehive tools outcome measures is very important and something I will definately include. Your other suggestions are right on the money for my goals too -- hopefully I will get some additional resources from OE, if not then I guess I need to take the initiative :-)
/Tina
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