Assessment:  Provides a measure for understanding a project's impact by determining the level of growth or change (or non-change) that has occurred over time as a result of a planned action, or outreach activity. In addition, you investigate the aspects of your project that contributed most and least significantly to that change. A thorough assessment contains measurement of outputs, outcomes and offers a set of recommendations for future effectiveness in a report that is distributed to all project stakeholders.

 

Attitude Change:  A change in thinking or feeling as a result of a specific program, activity, or event on a certain topic area.

 

Behavioral Change:  A change in actions as a result of an outreach activity, or program.

 

Evaluation:  A systematic and purposeful study of the merit or value of a project using multiple measures to give you a full picture of the impact. Evaluation is specifically targeted to making a judgment as to project success or failure.

 

Impact Goals:  Statements of outcomes from a project that illustrate how participants are expected to be affected by that activity. Well crafted impact goals state desired outcomes in a manner that is specific, measurable, realistic and unambiguous.

 

Learning / Awareness Raising:  An increase in the knowledge level or consciousness on an issue or topic.

 

Outcomes:  Effect of an activity, either long term or short term, on multiple audiences (participants, the community, the station staff, board members, etc.)

 

Outputs:  Products from an activity or project that reflect your work.

 

Partners:  Community organizations or individuals who collaborate to plan, conduct, and evaluate an outreach activity and work toward common goals and outcomes.

 

Qualitative Data:  Narrative or written data that is collected, analyzed, and reported to identify patterns and trends. This data allows people to express their views in their own words. However, great care needs to be taken to ensure that this data is collected and analyzed in a standardized manner.

 

Quantitative Data:  Numerical data that is collected, analyzed, and reported.

 

Stakeholders:  Organizations or individuals that are invested in knowing whether the initiative had impact.

 

Survey:  A data collection tool designed to seek answers from individuals about a certain topic. In most cases, this tool requires written responses and is completed individually. Surveys are very efficient data collections tools that are used to examine trends over a large sample of individuals.