Adapting evaluation materials for remote Indigenous communities and low-literacy participants
Adapting evaluation materials for remote Indigenous communities and low-literacy participants Conference Paper
12th Australasian Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect
- Author(s): Guenther, J, Boonstra, M
- Published: 2009
Abstract: Funders (quite rightly) expect that the money invested in social programs will produce results. Further and increasingly, they are expecting that evidence of these outcomes is produced. However, these outcomes, sometimes described in terms of performance indicators, are often prescribed from a western frame of reference and consequently, there is an expectation that evidence is reported within the same frame of reference. This of course is not a problem when the funder, the service providers and the service users all have the same frame of reference, but what might happen when service users and service providers have a different frame of reference from the funder? Put another way, what happens when the social norms, values and expectations of service users differ so much from those of the funder that performance indicators determined by a funder are effectively meaningless to the program’s intended targets. Unfortunately what is likely to happen is that the outcomes expected of a program will not be achieved. This may not be because the program is not working but 1) because the program objectives are reinterpreted to suit the local context or 2) the instruments used to measure outcomes are inadequate for the task.
- Urls: http://www.catconatus.com.au/docs/091117_APCCAN_FAST.pdf
- Publisher Location: Perth, Western Australia