Twenty Key Questions

● Purpose: Are you clear about the purpose of the evaluation?

● Change: What kinds of change might you expect the service user and carer to have made?

● Timing: When will you measure these changes? Are you looking for short-term results, longer term outcomes or both?

● Process of participation: How might the experience of participation be evaluated?

● Support and supporters: What kinds of support might be needed to make the evaluation an effective and independent one?

● Skills: What skills are needed to make an evaluation of participation?

● Training: What kinds of training are needed to help people to evaluate the participation?

● Resources: What resources are needed? Are resources such as a budget available?

● Organisational culture: How open to participation is the organisation as a group?

● Practice: How do you evaluate the way service users and carers are involved in practice?

● Structure: Is evaluation of participation a regular feature of the organisation or group? How might evaluation help it become part of the structure?

● Power: What differences in power are there between the people involved? How might these affect the evaluation? How will you involve people who are seldom heard?

● Tokenism: How will you avoid tokenism and evaluate whether the participation has been real and meaningful?

● Thorough and fair: How will you make sure that your evaluation listens to the negative messages as well as the positive ones?

● Linking participation to changes: How might you find out whether any changes are a result of participation and not something else?

● Ownership: How will service users and carers participate in deciding what will be evaluated and how? Who will undertake the evaluation and how independent are they? Are there any other ethical issues to be considered?

● Feedback: How do people find out about the results of the evaluation of service user and carer participation?

● Implementation: How are the findings from the evaluation to be used? Who will implement recommendations? What further changes should you expect as a result of the evaluation?

● Continuity: Is evaluation a one-off event or part of the way the group works all the time?

● Publicity: How do other organisations and groups learn from your experience of evaluating the difference that participation has made?