This section describes data and methodologies commonly used in HealthPathways evaluations. Depending on the purpose and desired outcomes of your evaluation, you may decide to use a selection of them in varying degrees.
The choice of methodologies will be driven by your key questions and data availability. Using independant methodologies and data to answer the same question can help confirm or reject your results, also known as triangulation.
Before you start gathering data, consider working with a statistician to make sure your methods, data, and approach are robust and achievable. The statistician could help also determine the sample sizes needed for statistically significant results.
What to consider:
- How will you determine what success looks like? For guidance, criteria, and standards, see BetterEvaluation – Determine What Success Looks Like.
- Will the methodologies and data answer your questions? Is your approach feasible? Are the data good enough quality?
- Are there different ways to answer your key questions using other data sources?
- How much resourcing is required to collect and analyse the data. For example, many one-on-one interviews take more time to carry out and analyse compared to a simple electronic survey.
- Can you link different data together? This often provides more insight than a single data set.
Types of data