Design an evaluation that fits your initiative
This is the whole journey in order, with a resource at every step. Start at the top or jump to the part you need. Each step is a choice, not a requirement, so take what fits and leave the rest. The framework is anchored on MHCCA's ten guiding principles and runs across two levels and sixteen domains.
You decide what to measure, choosing the signals that matter to your mission, your funders, and your community, and adding depth only as your capacity grows.
These steps are best worked through with the people they affect, not alone at a desk. Community-led and culturally safe practice is a core ethic of this work. Use the tools here to record decisions a group makes together, and spread the work across a few short sessions rather than one sitting.
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Describe your initiative
Start by writing a clear, shared description of your initiative and the context it sits inside: who hosts and funds it, who it serves, how people join, and which of the ten guiding principles its activities enact. Setting this down first makes your later results interpretable to readers who do not already know your context. These are instructions for describing your initiative, separate from registering an account.
Define your goals
Work with your team and the people you serve to build a short logic model, naming what the initiative does and what you expect to change. This gives you a clear picture of what you want to validate before you decide how to measure it.
Choose your domains
Pick the parts of the picture your evaluation will capture, matching the goals you defined in the previous step. Each domain comes with a full definition so you can judge which ones belong in your evaluation and which can wait.
Choose your study design
Decide how you will gather evidence and which methods you will use, including who you survey and who you interview. These choices then filter the indicators you are shown in the next step, so you only see measures that fit your methods.
Indicators & tools
Pick the indicators you will collect, filtered to the methods you chose in your study design, and build your intake and follow-up forms and interview guides in one place. Each indicator is tagged as a validated scale, a simple indicator, or a qualitative method, with a measurement-burden estimate.
Data collection & data use
Plan how you will collect data, and handle consent and data sharing before you gather anything. This covers the methods and platforms you will use alongside a consent checklist grounded in TCPS 2, the OCAP principles for First Nations data, and any agreements for sharing data with partners.
Analyse & reporting
Report the share of participants who improved, stayed stable, or declined, and pair those figures with selected stories. The analysis guide walks through simple descriptives, interpreting change, and bringing numbers and lived experience together for funders and partners.