The Dana River Watershed Project Example

To give you an idea of what you will produce as you work through the guide, the worksheet examples below show parts of the evaluation plan developed by the Dana River Watershed Project. The worksheets may be confusing or overwhelming; but remember they are the end product of each stage.

Getting Started
Before beginning the evaluation plan, the Dana River Watershed project participants thought about their reasons and capacity for evaluating, how they hope to benefit from evaluation, and their evaluation goals.

Worksheet - Clarify your purpose of engaging in evaluation
To find out if we are having an impact; to demonstrate our progress to funders and the public; to motivate ourselves; to decide whether we should adjust our focus or change our strategies

Worksheet - Clarify who will be involved in evaluation
Project managers, board of directors, volunteers, our chamber of commerce, experts from the university; input from our funders

Stage A: What do you want to achieve?
They then listed their project’s goals, objectives, threats and assets, and their strategies in Worksheet A.

Worksheet A - Creating a Situation Map
Goals Objectives Threats (–) & Assets (+) Strategies and Activities
Protect and restore biodiversity and water quality in the Dana River Watershed Improve water quality – Sediment and nutrient run-off from farming, ranching and development Restore stream bank vegetation· tree plantings· invasive salt cedar species removal
They depicted the relationships of the contents of their worksheet in a situation map. This map helped them understand how their project fit into the bigger picture, and they began to see which relationships were most uncertain or most important to their project’s success. Their effort also helped build a joint understanding of the project’s objectives and strategies among project participants.

Situation Map

Stage B: How will you know if you are making progress?
Dana River Watershed Project participants used their Situation Map to develop a list of questions – things they needed to know about their objectives, strategies, threats and assets.

Brainstorm Sheet B1 – Questions about your objectives

Is water quality improving?
Are we meeting water quality standards?
Are fish and endangered mussel populations recovering?
Has the character of the region become less desirable?
Based on these questions, they selected indicators, or measures of what they were interested in, and determined how they could assess a change in their indicators by comparing them against a different place or time. To check whether they had the right set of questions and indicators for their evaluation needs, they considered whether answers to their questions would be useful for decision-making.

Worksheet B – Developing an Assessment Framework
Priority for evaluation Evaluation Question Indicators Comparisons Uses of the Information
Water quality Is water quality improving? Index of Biological Integrity (IBI);Sediment loads; Trends over last 10 years; For annual Dana River Report Card, provides a direct measure of outcomes

Stage C: How will you get the information you need?
Dana River Watershed coordinators clearly laid out the information that they need and what they will need to do to get it. Assigning responsibilities made the task list tangible and helped each of the members understand their responsibilities.

Worksheet C - Preparing an Information Workplan
Question Indicator and Comparison Information Type of Analysis Responsibilities
Data Source Collect/obtain Store Analyze/examine
Is water quality improving? Index of Biological Integrity (IBI) over last 10 years composition & abundance of fish and invertebrates Dana College Bio 282 course analysis of statistically significant change over time Professor Jenn Walker & students project website Professor Jenn Walker & students

Stage D: How will you apply new information to decision-making?
The Dana Project team completed the evaluation loop by developing a clear idea of how they would use their evaluation information. Trigger points helped them decide when the information would warrant reconsideration of planned actions. Developing possible courses of action meant they would be ready to respond. Accountability was built in by identifying when and by whom decisions and actions would take place. In addition, by understanding that the group had no way of responding to some outcomes, it allowed them to re-prioritize their data collection approach so that they invested scarce resources into items on which action could occur.

Worksheet D – Agreeing on an Action Plan
Question Indicator and Comparison Trigger Point Possible Actions Who Will Respond
Is water quality improving? Index of Biological Integrity (IBI) over last 10 years lack of any IBI increase by 2004 - conduct or fund an experiment to directly test the effect of riparian buffers on water quality on-staff hydrologist