The first step in evaluating your YMHAC Initiative program is to contact the local school board and/or health unit to determine if ethics is required. If so, consider what internal resources you have to support your ethics application, and work with the organization that is requesting ethics to find out what the steps are and what information is required. Once that’s established, you’ll need to undertake the following activities.

1. Engage your stakeholders in the need to develop an evaluation plan.
2. Determining what resources you will need for an evaluation plan.
3. Construct the Evaluation Design to align with the YMHAC Logic Model, and with what you are evaluating (process, means, resources, activities, and/or outcomes), the purpose of your evaluation, and the questions you are trying to answer
4. Decide on a qualitative and/or quantitative method of measuring and appropriate data collections methods (e.g., survey, focus group, key informant interview).
5. Develop an evaluation plan that aligns with code of ethics (if necessary) and that protects confidentiality.
6. Collect data/gather evidence.
7. Process data and analyze/interpret results.
8. Share and apply evaluation findings.

For more information on developing evaluation plans, see resources listed under Tools to Support Evaluation.