STEP 6
Use and Share
Lessons Learned

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It is important to plan for communicating and disseminating your evaluation findings.

It will help your stakeholders and intended audiences use them in a timely fashion to improve, sustain, or make other decisions about the program. Translating your data into action involves the synthesis, exchange, and application of knowledge from research or evaluation to action.

Share Evaluation Results

There are many different strategies for communicating the results of your evaluation. The method for communicating the findings should be driven by your audience and the intended use of the findings. It is also important to share your lessons learned with the practice and scientific communities more broadly. Consider the type of information and amount of information desired, so you can provide your audience with information that they will use.

For ideas around ways to translate and share the results of your evaluation, download the Effectively Sharing Evaluation Findings worksheet.

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For more information about communicating your results, download this Communicating and Disseminating Evaluation Results worksheet.

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Facilitate Use of Findings

As discussed in the Preparing to Evaluate section, there are many uses of evaluation. Think about how you want stakeholders to use the information upfront so that you can create a plan that will ensure use and sharing of lessons learned.

The following strategies may help to facilitate use among your key stakeholders and engage them in reflective dialogue:

Co-develop recommendations and action steps

Focus on actionable strategies within the control of the intended users

Provide multiple options (especially incremental changes)

Generate ideas or information and obtain stakeholders’ feedback throughout the evaluation

Diagnose, contextualize, and be specific when sharing a negative finding (e.g., disaggregating and stratifying data to pinpoint the problem)

Considerations when Using and Sharing Lessons Learned

In relation to the Evaluation Framework Standards, ask yourself the following questions:

Utility

Are significant mid-course findings and reports shared with users in a way that encourages follow-through and supports stakeholders’ use in a timely fashion?

Feasibility

Are recommendations and the format of sharing beneficial to the audience’s use, action, and decision-making?

Propriety

Are evaluation findings, including the limitations, made accessible to everyone affected by the evaluation and others who have the right to receive the results?

Accuracy

Are the conclusions and recommendations specific and relevant to the program and fairly reflected by the evidence?

Engaging Stakeholders at Step 6

Engage stakeholders around the use of the evaluation to improve, inform, or influence some actions related to the program and the context and circumstances to which the program is connected.

For more information about using and sharing lessons learned, see CDC PPEO’s information about Step 6.

Congratulations!

You are now prepared to take action and make evaluation an essential part of your violence prevention plan.

If you have been walking through the steps of the evaluation plan template, you should have the information you need to complete the evaluation plan and begin implementing your evaluation.

Visit Violence Prevention in Practice on VetoViolence to learn more about planning, implementing, and evaluating violence prevention efforts.

While the evaluation process cycle ends here at Step 6: Use and Share Lessons Learned, the information shared begins the next cycle of evaluation. Therefore, this last step enables us to return to Step 1: Engage Stakeholders and continue the evaluation process. Repeat the evaluation process to refine your efforts and help enhance your impact.