5Review & act

Toolbox

The following tools are either internal resources developed by the BNSSG ICB Clinical Effectiveness team or external resources we have found useful.

• Sample register of evaluation projects (can be used to record completion and outputs)

BNSSG ICB Clinical Effectiveness team tools and templates

• Evaluation reporting template
• Guide to reporting, communicating and acting

Action planning

• NHS Scotland Quality Improvement Hub guide to action planning

Sharing

• Midlands DSU guide to evaluation design, principles and practice
• Better evaluation infographics

Knowledge mobilisation

• Resources to support implementation, knowledge mobilisation and impact
• Knowledge mobilisation toolkit from Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health

Please note we are not responsible for the content of external sites and these are for guidance only.

Steps

To make sure your evaluation has an impact you need to:

1. Review: clearly interpret and present your findings
2. Share: communicate to your intended audiences
3. Act: use your findings to inform your decision making

Note: your organisation may already have a standard template for reporting, communicating and implementing findings from project evaluations and reviews. We have provided some simple tools to help you if they don’t.

How will I present my findings?

There is no single way to organise the writing up of your findings. However, there are several ways that you can ensure your report is readable and easy to digest.

The overall aim should be simplicity, since a complex structure will hinder the reader’s understanding of the content. See our suggested report template.

The findings can be presented in a variety of ways, most commonly in a report, but consider alternatives such as presentations, posters, leaflets and infographics.

Think about your audience and the best way to communicate the information to them. Don’t forget to make sure you feedback the findings from your evaluation to those who participated.

How will I share my findings?

Working with your organisation’s communications experts and project team, draw up a communication and dissemination plan for your evaluation to maximise its impact. Consider who your audience is, what the different approaches are to communicating the messages and the different formats these could be communicated through. Where available, build into your project or service communications strategy.

How will I act on my findings?

Once you have reviewed the results of your evaluation (and taken account of limitations of these findings) you can use these to make your recommendations for going forward based on the evidence.

Ideally, these would be reviewed by and agreed with your project team and tested out with your key stakeholders. The next step is to develop an action plan for implementing these recommendations.