Tools for monitoring and evaluation

Effective monitoring and evaluation of public health policies and interventions helps us to understand the process of implementing them, and the impact of actions on population health. To do this we use an outcomes approach to

• support partners to report on their contributions to national and local outcomes
• provide partners with specialist support, tools and resources about how to effectively monitor progress and evaluate impact
• support partners to do an Evaluability Assessment with their stakeholders.

Evaluability assessment is a process to understand the feasibility of evaluating a public health intervention or policy. It does this by making clear the intervention or policy goals and how they are expected to be achieved.

You can find a list of all our evaluations, including evaluability assessments, below.

You can contact us for specialist guidance and tailored support for outcomes focused monitoring and evaluation.

The Better Evaluation website has resources to help plan, undertake and report evaluation of public health policies and interventions. The site includes the Rainbow framework toolkit (external site) to guide you through the steps in an evaluation and a full explanation of Evaluability Assessment methodology (external site).

Where appropriate, we promote an outcomes approach to evaluation. The tools that we commonly use to support an outcomes approach to monitoring and evaluation include

• logic models
• outcomes chains (sometimes called results chains).

These tools are collectively known as ‘outcomes frameworks’ and can be used to identify shared outcomes with relevant partners. They are also useful for planning policies or interventions. These outcomes frameworks should be informed by the best available evidence.

We have worked with partners to create a series of topic-specific frameworks which help link activities with longer term outcomes.

You can learn more about how to use these tools to support outcomes planning and evaluation on our Outcomes Framework website.

Third sector organisations and funders can seek specialist help from Evaluation Support Scotland (external website) to help them measure and report on their impact. They have produced a series of user-friendly evaluation support guides which are relevant to anyone undertaking evaluation.