Sources of Evaluation Data
Good evaluation questions provide guidance about possible sources of evaluation data. Depending on the nature of the question and the resources available, multiple sources might be used:

People inside the educational program:

• Faculty
• students and other learners
• Support staff
• Administrators

People outside of the educational program:

• Other cohorts of students
• Department chairs
• Administrators
• Colleagues

Records:

• Grades and test scores or other measures of performance
• Databases maintained by the institution
• Paper records, such as requests for programs, elective choices, residency placement, etc.
• Access to resources, such as visits to websites, requests for documents, telephone logs, etc.

Institutional Indicators

• Climate surveys
• Institutional surveys of graduates
• Scholarly productivity (funding, publications, etc.)
• Teaching evaluations
• Nominations for awards

EXAMPLE

In the previous step we wrote a few example evaluation questions for each objective. In order to evaluate the first objective—improving two specific communication skills—we decided to ask the students about the curricular module in terms of amount and quality of instruction  as well as the relevance of the content.  We also were interested in student’s self-appraisal of their own improvement in these skill areas as well as a more objective assessment of their skills.

For the three evaluation questions related to this objective, students would be the source of the evaluation data for the first two questions, while faculty and standardized patients would be the sources of data required to answer the third question.  Note that for the third question, there are multiple sources of data.

In order to evaluate the second objective—use of experienced faculty facilitators in the course—we decided to see if students value the involvement of faculty involvement in the course, and if faculty value their involvement in communication skills instruction.

To evaluate the two questions related to the second objective, the data sources are the students and the course faculty respectively.

The third objective—emphasis of the clinical relevance of communication skills—was evaluated from documentary.  This evidence was provided by students; they are the source of data for the third evaluation question.

See Example 1 in the Resources menu at the right for this example evaluation plan completed thus far.

WRITE YOUR OWN SOURCES OF EVALUATION DATA

In your Evaluation Planning Tool enter your sources of evaluation data in column 5.

Do you need more information? Check out the RESOURCES menu at the right.