Steps 7–9 Use Process and Outcome Evaluation Results to Improve or Reconsider the SAPA You Have Evaluated

Why

• Steps 7 and 8 are important because without evidence from systematic evaluation of implementation quality and outcomes you will be uninformed about the results you are producing and how to make them better.
• Step 9, Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), is important because:
  • CQI takes advantage of what you have learned over time from your combined evaluations to improve your SAPA for the future without starting over.
  • It puts the investment made in evaluation to work by using the results to make changes and understand their effects as you continue to implement your SAPA.
  • It helps all staff to keep your SAPA fresh and a good fit for your participants, your organization, and your community.

How

• Use the Evaluation Summary and CQI Review Worksheet provided with this step to summarize your process and outcome evaluation results and decide on improvements needed, if any, to reach your SAPA Overview desired outcomes.
• To enter and analyze your outcome data, you can use the Data Snapshot Tool for Prevention Activity Evaluation—an Excel-based tool that allows you to enter baseline and post activity data and then produces charts showing the amount of change.

Key Points

• Process evaluation (which targets implementation quality) and outcome evaluation (which targets effectiveness) go together because:
  1. Poor implementation results could explain poor outcomes.
  2. Good implementation results with poor outcomes might indicate the need to change the SAPA.
• The entire purpose of evaluation is to inform decisionmaking about how to improve a SAPA, maintain its effectiveness going forward, or change the SAPA when results show that it is not effective.
• GTO Steps 7–9 align with the continuous evaluation step in the PPoA prevention process.