Program Evaluation of Nonprofit Life Skills Program

¶ … particular type over other types available. Include any assumptions made that influenced your choice. Describe as best you can how you are going to carry out this experiment, step-by-step. Remember that you do not have to carry out the evaluation, but you should be creating a "recipe" that you and others can follow to aptly answer the question of interest.

The New Faith Family Center life skills program will be observed for a period of over 6 weeks at the Capital City Rescue Mission which is a discipleship and rehabilitation Centre that offers a wide range of service to its clients. The mission addresses most of its needs to the needy and homeless in the city. It provides services and accommodation, together with programs to women, homeless, and children.

The program itself is a yearlong residential, transitional program consisting of four phases to help up to 35 women and their children change old patterns and transform their lives. The program consists of: Educational/Career development, Employment readiness, Counseling, Life skills/Addiction Recovery, Parenting skills / Anger management, Health Care and Child care.

Methodology

Researcher will adopt a three-pronged approach in order to address every possible facet and in order to construct as rich an experiment as possible. For this reason, a qualitative rather than quantitative approach will be taken. Firstly, because we are dealing with people and the qualitative stance in this place seems better. Secondly, because we want to gain as much information as possible about how the people are feeling and what they think helped them.

The three-pronged approach will be the following: interviewing participants in a focus group and free-form interview format; observing the program as participant observer; and randomly surveying 35 participants 3 months and 6 months after the program has concluded to evaluate program effectiveness.

Methodology

(a) Observation and focus group

Data will be gathered from diverse sources. The clients' case files will be reviewed, as well as their archival records, the program documents, focus group, and interviews will be used, and participant observation will be conducted where a researcher will join in the session as one of the clients. New instruments for collecting data on the session will be codesigned with the staff and reviewed with them before being finalized.

Observation: Researchers will sit in as participant observer in each of the 6 sessions. The sessions will be videotaped and process notes will be taken during each session by a trained observer. Focus will be concentrated firstly on how the instructor facilitates the class and on the material that he/she uses; secondly, on participant's response to the class sessions.

Focus group: There will be three focus group sessions held with 17 randomly selected highly involved participants. The meetings will be facilitated by a skilled facilitator and not attended by staff. They will be recorded and transcribed. Questions will include asking participants how they feel about the course; whether the course is helping them; whether they wish for any further guidance from the course; in which ways they feel that they need further instruction or what they feel the Center could still give them in order to help them survive outside the setting.

A physical artifact Resident Participant Time Line will be created in order to determine resident's level and form of participant in the activities. This will consist of a 10-foot long roll of paper taped to the wall and during final focus session residents will be asked to mark which sessions they attended and which, in order of priority, most helped them. They will mark this though color-coded markers, stickers, and symbols. They will also be asked to note which critical events and milestones were most important for them at the Center.

Three evaluators will independently assess each focus group transcript, after which the evaluating team will convene to discover common themes.

b. The Interviews

Researchers will gain permission to look at records of randomly selected clients who conducted course. They will then follow up these clients in the interim of both 3 months and 6 months post-session in order to investigate how many have managed to get on with their lives and where they are holding in terms of their process. Clients and administration will be asked for permission to conduct this survey.

A monetary incentive will be offered and clients will be interviewed face-to-face by researchers visiting their homes. The interview will last no longer than an hour and interviewer will also request to see children.