Assessment

Knowing what works and what doesn’t work – learning from mistakes and discovering unexpected successes are vital for our projects to be as effective as possible. Equal Access’ uses a range of tools to measure the impact we are achieving with our work. We regard this process as an important way of making sure we are really listening and learning from the people we serve.

We tackle difficult communications challenges – from seeking to influence people to behave in more healthy ways to encouraging more tolerance and the reduced use of violence. In measuring our impact on our beneficiaries we focus on whether we have improved people’s knowledge, changed their attitudes to an issue or even influenced them to behave in a different way.

In order to measure these changes we use a variety of tools – both quantitative (involving statistically valid sampling similar to election polling) and qualitative (where we engage with our audience in-depth through focus groups and interviews). Combining these methods we can determine how many people have been impacted by our work and a range of subtle and more obvious ways that understanding, views and practices have changed as a result.

Our tools include:

Before and after large surveys on knowledge, attitude and behavior (baseline/endline)
Analysis of large amounts of audience feedback such as letters and text messages (many of our programs receive hundreds or thousands of messages a month)
Focus groups, participant panels and in-depth interviews
Analysis of stories that document individual or community change

Using and analyzing stories to illustrate impact offers a method to take what might be happening at a large scale and personalize it – so we can learn from real and profound examples of change at the individual or community level.

We carry out this research in partnership with a range of internationally regarded experts and in partnership with local and international institutions such as Nielsen and Queensland University of Technology.

For further detail about our evaluation methods and to request specific reports please contact…. info@equalaccess.com and check under Resources.