Qualitative Evaluation
What is a qualitative evaluation?
A qualitative evaluation provides the opportunity to explore the experiences of those using a service. Qualitative evaluations use words rather than numbers to discover what may contribute to a service being successful or not.
Why might you use a qualitative evaluation?
Qualitative evaluations can provide rich and detailed information to evaluate how successful a service has been. Qualitative evaluations give priority to smaller numbers of participants, often reflecting on individual stories, rather than statistics. Qualitative data usually comprises words/text, which may be transcribed from interviews or focus groups or directly collected from diaries or text accounts; it may also include visual or audio data such as art, recordings, videos and photographs.
It is common with qualitative methods to consider the context in which a service does or doesn’t work with greater detail than with quantitative methods. This can provide the opportunity to understand what about your service works well, and not so well, giving you potential ideas on how to improve provision. Qualitative approaches often gather information from multiple viewpoints, for instance those involved in the organisation and running of a service may provide their perspectives as well as those who use it.
Qualitative evaluations examine the experience of a service for different service users, for example men or women, adults or children; considering what aspects were of greatest benefit for whom, and what helped or hindered service users’ engagement with the service. Qualitative data can provide you with the means to evidence the successes of your service with quotes or case studies to provide evidence for how you are working to meet your aims and objectives for service users.
Why might you use a qualitative evaluation?
What are service users’ experiences of the service? |
Does the service address the needs it was intended to? How do people talk about the service? Was there something that was particularly positive for them or something that they enjoyed? Were there aspects which they didn’t find beneficial? |
What factors help or hinder service users’ engagement with the service? |
What made the service run well? Were there enough resources to help the service function appropriately? (e.g., staff or appropriate facilities) Could service users physically get to the service? Did it work better at certain times of the day or the year? |
Does the service work better for some service users than others? |
Was the service intended to work with men and women, older and younger people, those of all ethnicities, if so, is it meeting the needs of all those people equally? What are the different experiences of different groups of people? Is there anything which impacts on engagement with the service? |
How can you ask and answer your evaluation question?
Qualitative data is usually text, either written down by the participants themselves in journals or on feedback forms or collected verbally and transcribed from interviews or focus groups. Other qualitative data might be art, photographs or videos, although this can be harder to analyse and requires specialist expertise.
Most qualitative analysis comes from examining patterns or themes in the data, for instance looking at things that participants write or say which are similar or different to each other and then trying to think about why those patterns might exist.
Some qualitative questions are harder to explore and may require more expertise in the collection and subsequent analysis of the data.
If you wish to pursue qualitative evaluation methods, you can use our short guides to in-house qualitative evaluation and/or evaluation using an external researcher.