Rely on second-hand opinion only when first-hand information is not available
Objective
After an international conference, the coordinator wants to know what participants learned from the conference workshops.
Very Poor
The conference coordinator decides to not evaluate participant experiences because the workshop has ended and cannot survey participants directly.
Although not ideal, if an event is planned where surveys are not administered, it is possible to survey participants or workshop leaders after the event.
Poor
The conference coordinator decides to survey workshop presenters to ask questions around their learning objectives and participant comprehension of the material.
This approach continues to be poor because leaders may not have an accurate understanding of the extent to which participants actually understood and are able to integrate and apply the information presented.
Better
The conference coordinator surveys conference participants, asking questions around learning objectives and participant comprehension of the material, to get an idea of how the conference went.
Assessing participants' experiences from the perspective provides useful information because you collect their self-report of learning outcomes as well as test for comprehension.
Note: In some cases, second-hand opinion may be part of your evaluation design; for example to measure whether program leaders are accurately assessing satisfaction of participants. It is a method to confirm first-hand data.
