Articles
Explore our latest articles, developed by our team of evaluators and special guests, grounded in real-world experience to support your evaluation practice—whether you're a beginner or an expert.
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Why You Shouldn’t Rely On Default Survey Platforms To Give You All The Answers
Don’t get us wrong, surveys are useful tools and we’re a fan of any survey platform that makes it easier to use the results. But what about when you want to scratch beneath the surface or present a legible graph that will convince the program director or funder that action needs to be taken? This is where the canned survey tools start to falter.
Evaluation Question Examples
A blank page can intimidate any writer. The same goes for evaluators – that “evaluation questions” column in your evaluation plan may be daunting. Looking at examples of real-world evaluation questions just might inspire your own.
How We Evaluated: A Virtual Health Initiative
In this post, we describe how Three Hive Consulting supported the evaluation of a home health monitoring project for patients with chronic conditions.
Dial Down Your Data
In the past, I have been guilty of putting any and all data I could into a report. I’m talking pages of charts to show ALL the results. If I’m being honest, in some instances, I didn’t know what the point was. I put in as much detail as I could to shift the burden of deciphering the meaning behind the data to my reader.
Evaluation Roundup - March 2021
Welcome to our monthly roundup of new and noteworthy evaluation news and resources – here is the latest from March 2021.
Social Network Analysis And Evaluation: Learnings From The Evaluator And The Client
This post explores how we at Three Hive Consulting worked with a community development initiative to evaluate their activities using social network analysis (SNA). This methodology was used to better understand the relationships and foster collaboration between different individuals, groups, and organizations connected to the initiative.
Evaluation Roundup - February 2021
Welcome to our monthly roundup of new and noteworthy evaluation news and resources – here is the latest from February 2021.
Evaluation Roundup - January 2021
Welcome to our monthly roundup of new and noteworthy evaluation news and resources – here is the latest from January 2021.
How To Present Your Evaluation Timelines: 4 Simple Ideas
Here at Eval Academy we are big fans of keeping evaluation simple and that includes how we present our evaluation timelines. These four simple ideas use basic software (Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) to create clean and easy to understand timelines.
How To Plan Your Evaluation Timelines: 5 Simple Tips
How can you plan and predict your evaluation activities when they are dependent on other activities? How can you ensure you have the information you need when you need it? This article provides 5 tips to answer those questions and help you create a plan that will actually work for your evaluation.
Video: How To Create A Visually Impactful Column Chart
A tutorial on creating column charts in Microsoft Excel. Learn the basics of creating and transforming your column charts into something clean, informative, and impactful.
Make It Pop!
This article explores how to make elements in your report pop using focal points - something that draws our readers to a specific element on a page. Create focal points to draw your audience’s attention to key takeaways in your reports.
How We Evaluated: A Collaborative Of Non-Profits Serving Immigrant And Refugee Youth
This post explores how we at Three Hive Consulting worked with REACH Edmonton Council and other agencies to evaluate a unique initiative called Bridging Together. You’ll see how they developed and carried out an evaluation plan that yielded actionable information.
Practice Proximity
Part 3 in this six-part series focuses on formatting your report by grouping and spacing elements in your report to enhance readability. Let’s dig a bit deeper into human perception and explore how simply arranging elements on a page can make all the difference when it comes to engaging your audience in your report.
Cleaning Messy Text Data Is A Breeze With OpenRefine
We’ve all been there – you get some data from a client or a survey you’ve run, and you can’t wait to start answering your evaluation questions. But you find one of your data columns is a complete mess because it was an open-ended text field.
Cleaning this messy data can be a day-ruining task - but this doesn’t have to be! I’m going to show you how to use OpenRefine to make this task a million times easier.
Consistency Is Cool
This series of posts walks you through how to reno your evaluation reports using six of Canva’s design lessons. Part 1 focused on how to take your audience on a journey using storytelling techniques. Part 2 in this six-part series focuses on how to format your report with a consistent, cohesive look using two formatting elements: colour and font.