In December 2010, Ecorys Academy organised a workshop on evaluation studies for the ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. The idea of this workshop was to provide the people guiding evaluation studies with better knowledge of these studies.

To get more insight in evaluation studies the participants wanted to know more about the content of evaluation studies as well as the process. In other words: is the proposed timing plausible, will deadlines be met and will we get the results we want with the proposed evaluation design?

An interactive training method was chosen in order to establish the best learning effect. The participants were asked to prepare a couple of evaluation studies, performed under the care of their own division.  To get some insight in were they stood with their knowledge of evaluation studies, after a brief introduction the group was divided in two groups to further brainstorm about critical factors of success at the start and during the process of an evaluation. They were asked to write down the most important factors which would lead to a successful evaluation study. Their own brainstorm session as well as the evaluations they prepared beforehand were then used to illustrate the different stages of evaluation studies such as the evaluation objective, factors which could delay the evaluation process and the different methods used in evaluation studies. This proved to be quite successful as the participants were able to summarize several “lessons learned” during the workshop.

This concept can and has already been used for different clients. The workshop can easily be adjusted to the knowledge level of the participants as it can focus on evaluation studies which participants/organizations are familiar with as well as on the different stages of evaluation techniques and designs. For more information contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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