Outcome Measurement Resource Network

Outcome Measurement Resource Network

Targeted Community Interventions

Achieving and Measuring Community Outcomes

As this section grows, periodic reorganization may be necessary. For now, the resources below are divided into two general categories:

Some overlap is natural; check both lists if you don't find what you're after.

Concepts, Theories, and Key Issues

Achieving and Measuring Community Outcomes: Challenges, Issues, Some Approaches. 28 pp., 1999.: United Way of America. Identifies major challenges encountered by 12 United Ways seeking to achieve and measure community outcomes, outlines key issues in each challenge, and briefly describes some approaches to the challenges currently in use by these United Ways.
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Comprehensive Community Initiatives: A New Generation of Urban Revitalization Strategies. 1997.: Authored by Kristina Smock and published online as part of COMM-ORG's Working Papers series. Overviews several examples of CCIs and places CCIs in their appropriate historical context. Outlines the primary characteristics of CCIs (citizen participation, a locally-based approach, a comprehensive approach, collaborative public-private partnerships, and a consensus orientation) and reviews the potential benefits and dangers of each.
Improving Health in the Community: The Role of Performance Monitoring. 496 pp., 1997. Jane S. Dursch et al. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.: Explains how population-based performance monitoring programs can help communities point their efforts in the right direction. Addresses factors surrounding the implemetnation of performance monitoring and explores the "why" and "how to" of establishing mechanisms to monitor the performance of those who can influence community health. Offers a policy framework, applies a multidimensional model of the determinants of health, and provides sets of prototype performance indicators for specific health issues.
New Approaches to Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives. Vol. 1: Concepts, Methods, and Contexts. 1995.: Aspen Institute's Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families. Introduces the theory-of-change approach to evaluating comprehensive community initiatives, discusses the role of social science in planning comprehensive community initiatives, and explores key challenges in evaluating community-wide initiatives.
Stories of Renewal: Community Building and the Future of Urban America, 1997.: Authored by Joan Walsh for the Rockefeller Foundation. Part One of this report consists of case studies of five mature community-building initiatives representing five issue areas: engaging government systems, investing in outreach and organizing, involving the corporate sector, and developing new facilitating structures. Part Two is a practical, no-nonsense look at lessons in these five issue areas.

Strategies, Methods, Tools, and Case Studies

ACT National Outcomes Network & Outcomes Toolkit.: Premier Internet-based toolkit supporting hospitals, public health departments, foundations, human services agencies, and others with guidance on strategic planning for single organizations and for regional partnerships, program management to coordinate multiple interventions, defining and tracking outcome goals and performance indicators, and exchange of promising strategies, practices and data among local and state leaders across the nation.
Building Results: From Wellness Goals to Positive Outcomes for Oregon's Children, Youth, and Families, 2d ed., 388 pp., 1997.: Prepared for the Oregon Commission on Children and Families by the Oregon State University Family Policy Program. Introduces Oregon's model linking community goals with outcomes for children, youth, families, and communities. Outlines a broad array of principles for reaching those goals. Summarizes some research on links between a variety of outcomes and prevention and intervention strategies for several goal areas, including strong, nurturing families; healthy, thriving children; educational progress and success, and caring communities and systems.
Building Results III: Measuring Outcomes for Oregon's Children, Youth, and Families, 327 pp., 1998.: Prepared for the Oregon Commission on Children and Families by the Oregon State University Family Policy Program. Introduces the definitions and principles of accountability and performance measurement; briefly overviews measurement approaches and survey development; and summarizes outcomes, indicators, and measurement instruments (detailed in the Appendix of Measures) for families, children, youth, education, and child and youth environments.
Building Results III Appendix of Measures: Measuring Outcomes for Oregon's Children, Youth, and Families, 380 pp., 1998.: Prepared for the Oregon Commission on Children and Families by the Oregon State University Family Policy Program. Presents more than 100 data collection instruments and summarizes each instrument's purpose, scoring instructions, reliability and validity, norms, recommended use, and references.
Coral: A Multi-Site Initiative to Improve Academic Achievement and Build Capacity. The Evaluation Exchange, Vol. VII, No. 2, p 5-6, Spring 2001. Harvard Family Research Project, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.: Summarizes the evaluation of CORAL (Community Organizing Resources to Advance Learning), a 10-year initiative to improve academic achievement through out-of-school activities. The evaluation focuses particularly on CORAL's theory of change and research questions in five areas: implementation, utilization, child and family outcomes, contextual factors, and sustainability.
Evaluating Collaboratives: Reaching the Potential, 162 pp., 1998.: The University of Wisconsion Cooperative Extension. Overviews the context and practice of evaluation and principles of collaboration. Includes chapters on evaluating self-interest, feasibility, process, and outcomes for various targets (individuals, families, service systems, whole communities, etc.), as well as methods and techniques.
Evaluating Community Program Initiatives: Chapter 36-39 of the "Community Toolbox" offers a number of tools for evaluating community program initiatives including tools and tips on designing evaluation frameworks and plans, choosing evaluators, and understanding interests of program stakeholders. Also provides information on data collection and analysis techniques and specific methods for evaluating comprehensive community initiatives, and discusses how evaluation can be used to understand and improve a community initiative.
Evaluating Comprehensive Community Change. 37 pp., 1997.: Report of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's March 1997 Research and Evaluation Conference. Discusses clarifying goals and outcomes to strengthen evaluations, study design and methodology issues, data collection and management issues, and issues around interpreting, communicating, and using data. Also summarizes next steps to improve evaluations of comprehensive community change.
Evaluating Comprehensive Community Outcomes: Section 5 of the "Community Toolbox" primarily describes what, why, when, and how to evaluate comprehensive community intiiatives with real world situational examples. Provides hyperlinks to related chapters and sections, a checklist and ready to use overheads that summarize the major points contained in the section.
Indispensable Information: Data Collection and Information Management for Healthier Communities 105 pp., 2000. Peter Tatian. The Urban Institute, Washington, DC.: Reference and how-to guide for collecting, using, and disseminating data for community decision-making and information-sharing. Describes resources and methods available for implementing an outcomes-based approach to developing healthier communities. Outlines the ways to use data effectively to bring about community change, provides secondary data source references, illustrates quantitative and qualitative data collection methodologies, and describes elements of a research and data collection plan.
Measures for Community Research, 1999.: Aspen Institute's Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families. Searchable online database of data collection instruments for measuring community outcomes. Each entry is annotated with a brief summary and links to more detailed information, references, and contact information for that instrument.
New Approaches to Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives. Vol. 2: Theory, Measurement, and Analysis, 260 pp., 1998.: Aspen Institute's Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families. Includes several reports on the application of the theory-of-change approach to evaluating community initiatives. Other papers focus on key measurement challenges, the use of small-area analysis, and establishing causality.
Plain Talk: Addressing Adolescent Sexuality Through A Community Initiative: A Final Evaluation Report. 140 pp., 1999. Prepared for the Anie E. Casey Foundation by Karen E. Walker and Lauren J. Kotloff. A hard copy can be ordered from Private/Public Ventures.: Report based on an evaluation of the Plain Talk Program in five different city neighborhoods. Examines the effectiveness of the program in several areas and the opportunities and challenges in implementing such a complex program.
The Community Toolbox: "How to tools" that use a simple, friendly language to explain how to do the different tasks necessary for community health and development, including evaluation. Each section includes a description of the task, advantages of doing it, step-by-step guidelines, examples, checklists of points to review, and training materials. Additionally, links to hundreds of other helpful web pages and listservs are provided.
The Results and Performance Accountability Implementation Guide. Friedman, Mark.: Useful guide for people implementing results or performance accountability in their community, city, school district, county, state or nation. Organized by questions, contains implementation, tools, techniques, exercise forms, formats, overheads, and pictures, case studies, references, and organizational resources.

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