Program Evaluations and Organizational Reviews

Program evaluations and organizational reviews are essential to ensure the ongoing effectiveness, efficiency and relevance of organizations, companies and government departments. A professionally designed program evaluation or organizational review can provide you with the information and knowledge needed to answer the following questions, with confidence:

• Whom do we serve?
• Have clients' or customers' needs changed over time?
• If they have changed, have we kept pace with these changes?
• Do our services or products successfully do what they are designed to do?
• How satisfied are our clients or customers with the services or products they receive from us?
• How do clients or customers evaluate our employees regarding their dependability, accessibility, knowledge, respectfulness, and so on?
• What improvements are needed to increase client or customer satisfaction?
• Are our services and processes cost-effective and efficient?
• How is the quality of our products or services evaluated by our clients or customers, and by our managers and employees?
• What should we change and what should we keep on doing?

Some senior managers rely on their intuition and impressions to answer these questions. The benefit of conducting a formal evaluation or review is that you can empirically demonstrate the strengths and benefits of your company or organization, as well as identify areas where improvements may be needed. These findings can then be clearly communicated to your managers, employees and other stakeholders, as part of a strategic planning process.

Since 1988 Kaplan Research Associates Inc. has offered its program evaluation services to the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. Over the years we have demonstrated our proven expertise in a range of quantitative and qualitative research and evaluation methods. We offer a variety of methods for data gathering, including: questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, case studies (personal stories), administrative reviews, and literature reviews and internet searches. We also conduct a wide range of evaluations, such as:

• The analysis of client and customer characteristics (profiles)
• Satisfaction evaluations to measure client or customer perceptions
• Outcome studies to measure program and service effectiveness and impacts
• Process evaluations
• Tracking program and organizational outputs
• Needs assessments and gap analyses

How We Approach Each Program Evaluation And Organizational Review:

We work in collaboration with our clients. To achieve this we work through organizational Steering Committees that actively participate in the development of each study's objectives, related research instruments, and the development of conclusions and recommendations based on the study findings. This approach is consistent with the OCAP principles of Ownership, Control, Access and Participation. Our research methods and instruments are always customized specifically for our clients' sectors or industries, the research questions they need to answer, their timelines to complete the study, and their budgets.