The Role of Objectives

You can evaluate your program for a variety of reasons, at different phases of your program’s development and implementation, and with varying levels of complexity and depth. Before an evaluation begins, objectives are written to help you accomplish these three things: Bring focus to the purpose of your evaluation, Describe the results you would like to achieve through the evaluation, and Describe the manner in which these results will be achieved.

Objectives answer this question:

What do you, or your audience, want to know or be able to do once your evaluation is completed?

Without objectives, your evaluator will be unfocused, and won’t know what to look at to decide whether the evaluation was effective or not. But evaluation objectives do more than just focus the evaluator. Well-written and clearly defined objectives:

• Define what will happen
• Help set evaluation and program priorities
• Address identified audience needs and interests
• Aid in monitoring progress toward achieving goals
• Facilitate measuring success
• Determine if the evaluation is appropriate for the audience, content, and community
• Set targets for accountability
• Make outcomes clear and attainable