You don’t necessarily need to wait until the end of an activity or project to reflect on it. In fact, it’s often a good idea to ask yourself if things are working as you go along. The lessons you learn from reflecting on what you set out to do, and what you’ve already achieved, can be used to decide what action to take next.

What questions should we ask?

The questions that might be asked in an evaluation will depend on the type of actions you’re taking and the goals of that activity. There are no right or wrong questions in an evaluation. Instead, it depends on what you want to find out.

When you started planning your project or activity, you would have identified some aims and objectives to justify why things should happen. When starting your evaluation, it’s important to come back to these aims and objectives. An evaluation should make it clear whether or not these things were achieved, how this occurred – and if not, why not.

Here are some ideas for questions you might ask:

• Have we achieved the goals of the activity or project?
• Am I achieving my personal goals by being involved?
• Is everyone involved able to have his or her say and contribute?
• Does everyone have something to do?
• Are any partnerships in the activity working?
• Is the activity still meeting the needs it was supposed to?
• If making successful links with other organisations or people was a priority, were we successful?
• Have we used our resources as best we can?
• Are we still within our budget?
• Are we keeping to our timeline?
• How could the activity be improved?