Guides to evaluation of public engagement

Below are a range of introductions and guides to the evaluation of public engagement with a strong UK emphasis. These tend to be focused on events and research dissemination, rather than more concerted community engagement. They do offer concise and clear introductions to evaluation, summaries of useful approaches to data gathering and analysis and planning templates. I have highlighted those that are most relevant to international public engagement and given a sense of their contribution.

Evaluation Practical Guidelines: A guide for evaluating public engagement activities: Research Councils UK. Accessible and clear (49 pages) guide to evaluation of public engagement activities. Tends to focus more on events and exhibitions and researcher dissemintation, rather than more extensive community engagement. Gives a concise clear introduction to the basics of evaluation and developing an evaluation plan from initial objectives. Includes some guidance on designing questionnaires and doing focus groups and interviews with some good links to resources.

http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/RCUK-prod/assets/documents/publications/evaluationguide.pdf 

Public Engagement Evaluation guide, Manchester Beacon for Public Engagement

Accessible guide (35 pages) to evaluation of public engagement events with a clear introduction and a range of templates that can be adapted, including for monitoring events, and for producing concise case-studies of projects. UK focused and deals mainly with events and one-off projects. Extensive set of links to guidance on evaluation of science communication, community engagement, arts and heritage and health and wellbeing indicators.

http://www.manchesterbeacon.org/publications/view/10/Public-Engagement-Evaluation-Guide

Evaluating your engagement activities: developing an evaluation plan. Manchester University/Suzanne Spicer. Short outline (14 pages) of the steps to planning an evaluation of public engagement activities. Includes a range of tables, templates and examples.

http://heritageafterlife.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/evaluating-your-public-engagement-activities.pdf 

Ingenious evaluation toolkit: developed by the Royal Academy of Engineering to support evaluation of the public engagement capacity and activities of engineers. http://bit.ly/djUPUC

Includes a short accessible guide (22 pages) to the basics of evaluation, including a simple explanation of evaluation approaches and data analysis. Although this is designed for those evaluating engagement projects in engineering it is a very clear introduction to key aspects of planning an evaluation:

http://www.raeng.org.uk/societygov/public_engagement/ingenious/pdf/Evaluation_Guide.pdf 

The Collective Memory, British Science Association. Online database of evaluations of science communication initiatives in the UK. http://collectivememory.britishscienceassociation.org/ 

UK National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement NCCPE: A number of the above resources are highlighted by the NCCPE, whose more general evaluation resources can be found at: http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/how/guides/evaluation/resources

These introductory resources have been developed by Robin Vincent as part of supporting the Wellcome Trust linked community of practice on evaluation of public and community engagement.