Including policymakers in program evaluation

Have you ever included interviews with policymakers in your program evaluation? If you are running a pilot program that a) relies on the cooperation of implementers or b) is a model that you hope to scale up, engaging policymakers can be a useful step.

Let's look at the first case. You are running a pilot program that relies upon the good hearts of implementers. In other words, you have cobbled together a series of special arrangements. Your program participants are treated differently than others. If these special arrangements have benefited your participants, it might be good to let policymakers know about that. Maybe they already know. By engaging policymakers as part of the program evaluation process you can find out what they already know about your program and the population you work with. You can also provide information about the program and the population. The research/evaluation paradigm is a useful one for this interaction. It takes the pressure off the policymaker, and puts the onus on you to improve your program. At the same time, it engages the policymaker as an ally.

How does all this impact implementers? People who have agreed to help you do things differently are change agents in their own right. Pursuing policy support for their activities and policymaker recognition of their leadership is a great way to reward their collaboration. The one caveat to this: if the implementer is doing something risky to their career by helping you, obviously you shouldn't call attention to it.

Lets look at the second case. You have a program you think is great and you want to replicate it. In this case, you again are going in to gauge the policymakers knowledge of your program, the problems it attempts to address, and the population you work with. The information you gather about how your population, problem, and program are viewed will inform your strategies for garnering support (monetary and other) for replication. Concerns must be addressed. Confusions clarified. Appeal amplified.

I did a series of interviews with policymakers as part of an evaluation of a jail-based re-entry program some years ago. The information obtained in the interviews helped to frame strategies for an advocacy campaign to support re-entry friendly policies. The creation of new relationships as part of the process (or in some cases the enrichment of ongoing relationships) was also extremely valuable.