Evaluation café

Resource link

This web page, by Karsten Weitzenegger, provides a comprehensive guide to using evaluation or World Cafe as a method for stakeholders to evaluate a program in a workshop-style session.

The guide outlines advantages and limitations, priniciples and procedures,  and instructions on planning and facilitating sessions. It also provides advice for creating questions along with some key examples that can be used in an evaluation cafe workshop.

Excerpt

"Evaluation consists in judging the results of public actions in order to check their conformity with set objectives. Evaluation aims to improve management, in particular by taking into account the lessons of past public actions and to reinforce capacity to account for, and to ensure, better transparency.

Evaluation Café is a fast result-driven qualitative survey, seen as a participative way of focus group interview. The group comprises individuals involved in a development policy or intervention. It is set up to get information concerning the people’s opinions, behaviours, or to explain their expectations from the policy or intervention.

The café group is useful in evaluations of projects or programmes, and particularly for field studies with beneficiaries and intermediary stakeholders. When a café group is organised after the implementation of a programme with a view to assess its impact, it helps understanding, analysing and identifying the reasons beneath the opinions expressed by the participants." (Weitzenegger, 2010)

Contents

  • Brief description
  • Purpose
  • Main users
  • Context
  • Advantages
  • Limitations
  • Principles
  • Café questions
  • Alternative questions and mind maps
  • Preparing for the evaluation café
  • Planning the session
  • Developing questions
  • Facilitating the session
  • Participation rules

Sources

Weitzenegger, K., (2010). Evaluation Cafe. Retrieved from: https://www.weitzenegger.de/content/?page_id=1781

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