What are the most common challenges faced during performance evaluations?
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Performance evaluations are an essential part of grant administration, as they help measure the progress, impact, and outcomes of funded projects. However, they also pose many challenges for grant managers, grantees, and evaluators. In this article, you will learn about some of the most common challenges faced during performance evaluations and how to overcome them.
Data collection is a major challenge when it comes to performance evaluations, as it requires gathering relevant and reliable information from multiple sources. However, data collection can be difficult due to a lack of clear indicators and methods, limited resources, low response rates and data quality, as well as ethical and legal issues. To address these challenges, you must plan your data collection strategy carefully and ensure that it aligns with your evaluation goals and questions. Additionally, you should use multiple and appropriate data sources and tools, ensure data validity and reliability, follow ethical and legal standards, and respect the diversity and context of your stakeholders.
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Nashwan Ahmed
CEO of EvalYemen (VOPE) | Experienced Evaluation Expert | Driving Evidence-Based Decision-Making and Impactful Insights
I’m an evaluation professional with experience as a consultant, researcher, trainer, and manager. I want to share some challenges I faced during performance evaluations: • Defining clear and relevant criteria and indicators that reflect the objectives and outcomes of the intervention. • Collecting reliable and valid data that can answer the evaluation questions and support the analysis and conclusions. • Communicating and disseminating the evaluation results in a way that is useful and meaningful for the intended users. I overcame these challenges by involving stakeholders, using mixed methods, triangulating data, and planning communication and dissemination activities. What are your challenges and solutions? Please comment below.
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Jonathan Lanidune-PhD,(PMP)®
Food Systems | Market Access | Resource Mobilization | Grant Management | Senior Leadership | Program and Program Management
Performance evaluation can be faced with many challenges if not properly implemented. Key challenges include getting rightful target of participants. If not done right, results could be misleading and not portray the true picture. Also finding the rightful stakeholders could be challenging as that could ensure sustainability and leveraging of adequate resources.
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Mohamud Mohammed
Senior program operations manager with over 14 years of experience in program management, building effective operation,
building the consesus on the data and the track record of the time frame under review is one of the core challenges that is always overlooked and over shadowed by the most recent foot marks that could be easily traced back in the last few days or week of the staff performance. which needs tools to trace and inclusively review the whole chain and the journey that the employee had travelled to come to this final density. the understanding of the objective of the performance review is another areas that the two sides rarely builds a common understanding of improving the professional career of the person under review and professional responsibility being discharged by the line manager to frame the future career improvement of the staff.
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Data analysis is a significant challenge for performance evaluations, as it involves processing, organizing, and interpreting the collected data to answer the evaluation questions and draw conclusions. This process can be difficult due to factors such as large and complex data sets, incomplete or conflicting information, bias and subjectivity, and technical or statistical skills. To overcome these challenges, you should use appropriate data analysis methods and techniques, like qualitative or quantitative methods or descriptive or inferential statistics. Additionally, it’s important to check and clean your data, triangulate and compare your sources, acknowledge and minimize bias, and seek feedback from others.
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Atif Hussain
AI| Business Analytics| | Data Science| Machine Learning| Natural Language Processing| Text Analytics| Teaching
Data analysis is very challenging for various reasons. The most important challenge is the availability of the right mix of skills. The people with the domain knowledge may not be technically as good and vice versa. However, with the availability of AI tools this is becoming easier. You only need to provide basic technical skills to people and they may be able to conduct the whole analysis with the help of AI e.g., ChatGPT.
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Data reporting can be a challenge when it comes to performance evaluations, due to factors such as diverse and multiple audience needs, limited and conflicting information, complex and technical language, format and presentation issues, and dissemination and utilization barriers. To overcome these challenges, you should tailor your data reporting to your audience, using clear and simple language, avoiding jargon and acronyms, and using visual aids and examples to illustrate your points. Additionally, you should consider the format and presentation of your report in terms of length, structure, style, and design. Finally, an effective dissemination and utilization strategy should be planned and implemented - such as sharing the report through various channels, engaging stakeholders, and following up on results.
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A. Craig Dixon
Grants Specialist at Madisonville Community College
While it is important to paint your organization in a positive light, I find that funders appreciate honesty and candor when issues arise. Rather than trying to talk around or minimize problems, be honest about what didn't work, why you think it didn't work, and what you are going to do to try and correct the problem in future performance periods (if applicable). If you try to downplay the problem and then you're unable to solve it and it gets worse, the funder will want to know why it wasn't acknowledged and addressed earlier. We have had projects that I saw as abject failures that the funder was still pleased with because, as the program officer put it, we never quit trying new approaches to solve the problem.
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Marvin Lam
Writing Instructor @ University of Toronto | PhD in Applied Linguistics
Think of your reporting as building a narrative with grounded impact statements. Many funders do stipulate reporting format with templates and forms, but they should not stop you from seeing the need to convince. Filling out these templates and forms can make you look like a student submitting an assignment, only providing facts that you are asked to. Avoid that. Always imagine your funders being reasonably critical and you need to convince and impress at every point of communication, including reporting your findings. Have clear impact statements that consist of (1) description of facts from your data that you'd like to illustrate an achievement or a problem, and pair that with (2) explanation and/or discussion on the implication.
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Mohammed A. Al-Shargabi
Proceed to succeed!
I agree with what was mentioned here by other colleagues - just one addition to build up upon these findings: We usually disregard adding extra relevant information because of the word limit and/or the format of the donor's report itself. Proper justification to issues faced is important, and can be tailored in alignment to any format or word limit, so it shouldn't be overrun by any sort of limitation. To avoid such scenarios, we should be as straightforward as possible while reporting; putting our fingers on what went wrong on a transparent manner, without fear of "shooting ourselves in the foot." Once this is done properly, it will benefit both the implementing partner/organization and the donor, either on the long or short run.
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A fourth challenge of performance evaluations is stakeholder engagement, which involves involving and consulting the relevant parties who have an interest or influence on the evaluation. However, this can be difficult due to factors such as competing interests, power dynamics, communication issues, resistance, and feedback. To overcome these challenges, you should identify and map your stakeholders, understand their roles and expectations, and create clear communication and collaboration mechanisms. Additionally, you should involve your stakeholders during the entire evaluation process from planning to reporting and ask for their input and feedback. It is also important to address any resistance or conflict that arises and foster a sense of participation and ownership among your stakeholders.
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Gonzaga Mungai, PMP®
Sustainable Business | International Development | Programme Management
In addition, a good understanding of the culture of the stakeholders is important to inform the methodology of engagement. This can influence the stakeholders willingness to participate. Evaluators also need to be conscious of possible biases as a result of stakeholders expectations based on their level of interest in the programme. It's important to articulate clearly the objectives of the evaluation exercise, to ensure objectivity in stakeholder feedback. Lastly, it's important to find suitable avenues to feedback to the respective stakeholders based on their categories. Many times, this step is overlooked and the findings of the exercise are left to the implementors, and granting agencies.
Evaluation capacity, or the ability and readiness of individuals and organizations to plan, conduct, and use performance evaluations effectively and efficiently, can be challenging due to a lack of knowledge and skills, resources and support, culture and commitment, systems and structures, or incentives and rewards. To overcome these obstacles, it is important to assess and enhance evaluation capacity within your organization as well as among grantees and evaluators. This may include providing training and coaching, allocating resources and support, creating a culture of commitment to evaluation, establishing systems and structures for evaluation, and offering incentives or rewards for evaluation.
Evaluation quality is a sixth challenge of performance evaluations, which refers to the extent to which the evaluation meets standards and criteria of good practice. This can be difficult due to lack of clarity and agreement on the evaluation purpose, scope, and questions; lack of alignment and coherence between the evaluation design, methods, and data; lack of rigor and transparency in the data collection, analysis, and reporting; lack of stakeholder involvement and feedback; and lack of follow-up and learning. To overcome these challenges, you should ensure your evaluation is well-planned, well-designed, well-executed, well-reported, and well-used. Additionally, use consistent criteria and standards such as those provided by the American Evaluation Association or the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Additionally, monitor your evaluation process and outcomes, seeking external review if needed.
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Marvin Lam
Writing Instructor @ University of Toronto | PhD in Applied Linguistics
One of the important criteria on the quality of evaluation is whether your evaluation presents a comprehensive view of your project, or only a one-sided story on achievements or great things about your project. Funders often find it suspicious when reading evaluation reports that only talk about good things, describing perfect project implementation, while we all know the world does not go as that. Be honest about difficulties and failures you have encountered. Present them with your explanation, remedy recommendations, and/or takeaways that can be insightful for similar endeavours in the future. Doing so reflect you are an honest and responsible grantee, and the strong learning culture of the organization you represent.
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Dr. Lisa M. Gonzales
Executive Director @ Marysville School District | School Business Management
From my experience as a leader in public education, data collection for evaluations can be limiting based on collective bargaining agreements. It would be helpful for more authentic employee feedback to provide data-based aspects in the evaluation process.
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