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ABSTRACT
Good evaluation practice generally requires that clear project and program objectives, baselines, metrics and data collection and analysis methods be in place from project commencement to ensure that data are captured reliably. Causal links between actions and outcomes, when coupled with relevant data, should be sufficiently direct to allow reliable (preferably quantifiable) deductions to be drawn about project and program effectiveness and efficiency. However there are situations where the conditions are far from this ideal but when it is nevertheless important to objectively evaluate outcome performance and to find ways to improve programs. This article outlines an approach to manage evaluations where: baseline data is deficient; cause–effect relationships are complicated; and project objectives are complex. The approach was applied to evaluate a program that provided public funding to support a diverse portfolio of community-based, on-ground invasive animal control projects. The approach used: explicit ex post theorising to distil testable hypotheses about effectiveness and project operation; mixed-methods data gathering and analysis; triangulation of different types of evidence; expert data gatherers; and careful attention to the policy objectives of the evaluation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr Miriam Verbeek is Director of the strategic consulting group, The Profit Foundation. She holds an adjunct position with the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law at the University of New England. She was the manager of the project to investigate the success of the invasive species program for the Australian Commonwealth Government’s Caring for our Country Program.
Professor Paul Martin is the Director of the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law at the University of New England. He leads a national research collaboration focused on maximising citizen engagement in the management of invasive species. He was the team leader of the project to investigate the success of the invasive species program for the Australian Commonwealth Government’s Caring for our Country Program.
Dr Michael W-P Fortunato is an Assistant Professor of Sociology - Engaged Scholar, and Director of the Center for Rural Studies at Sam Houston State University. Fortunato’s professional interests include finding ways to infuse community development practice with high levels of creativity, enthusiasm, and compassion. His research focuses on how local culture and institutional structure shape local innovation, entrepreneurship, and well-being in communities both domestically and internationally; and how to enable transformation from legacy social systems into newer, flexible, more democratic and entrepreneurial local systems that serve the public good.
Dr Theodore R. Alter is professor of agricultural, environmental and regional economics and co-director of the Center for Economic and Community Development in Penn State’s Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education. He also serves as Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Law at the University of New England in Australia. His research and teaching focus on community and regional economics, community and rural development, institutional and behavioral economics, and the political economy of public and collective choice.
Jeffrey C. Bridger is Senior Scientist in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at Penn State University. His research and teaching interests include community theory, rural community development, the human dimensions of natural resource use, and university-community engagement.
Rama Radhakrishna is professor of agricultural and extension education in the department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and Education at Penn State. He also serves as Assistant Dean for Graduate Education in the College of Agricultural Sciences. His teaching and research focus on Extension program development and evaluation and research methods and international agricultural development.
ORCID
Miriam Verbeek http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1284-4756
Theodore R. Alter http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3472-7016
Notes
1. We found anecdotal evidence for this statement, though no empirical evidence of the extent and impact of this issue.
2. Contract: Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities; and Invasive Animals Limited, dated 11 April 2012, Ref K1 12-25. Report dated 13 May 2013.
3. A further difficulty was that more than half the projects were involved with management of feral pigs and foxes while few projects were involved with management of wild dogs.
4. Drs Peter Fleming, Peter Saunders, Glen Saunders, Mike Braysher, Steve Lapidge, Guy Ballard, Jeff Bridger, Lyndal Joy-Thomson, Deedee Woodside, Les Russell and Brian Cooke.
6. In four projects, the applicant was no longer available. We attempted to contact the applicant in their new position and arrange interviews with them – this was possible in two cases.
7. One project did not render data sufficient for quantifiable data for analysis.
8. This was because the project had been completed for some time and the manager had moved on, or the project was such an integral part of a wider NRM effort that it was not possible for stakeholders to provide discreet information about the invasive animal control component.
9. These relationships are correlated using Pearson’s r, and a simple, two-tailed (non-directional) t test to determine significance levels using listwise deletion.