Funding organizations that support research and development (R&D) are under increasing pressure to assess the outcomes of their research and training programs to improve program management and demonstrate impact to diverse stakeholders.
In this white paper, we aim to introduce R&D program staff to the importance of following an evaluation framework as a model that can:
- guide the definition of program goals through a logic model,
- identify data needs at both program initiation and midpoints,
- establish evaluation implementation strategies and metrics, and
- define benchmarks that will be relevant to assessing program impact
Combined with proactive program evaluation, the evaluation framework brings clarity to program goals and maximizes agency investment in both conducting R&D and in carrying out evaluation efforts to measure and assess program activities.