Development of an Evaluation Framework and Research Tool Package for Merseyside Arts, Culture, Sport
From January to March 2024, ERS worked with Merseyside Police to produce a Logic Model, Evaluation Framework and Research Tools to evaluate the Merseyside Arts Culture Sports programme. It was an important aim of the commission to work with the Arts Culture Sports organisations involved to include their voice. This involved organising and hosting three research workshops, exploring with the organisations what had worked well in previous evaluations, and what would work well looking ahead, to inform the evaluation framework. ERS also consulted the programme staff, acting as a learning partner to ensure the logic model and evaluation framework built sufficient capacity for future evaluations.
Once the Logic Model and Evaluation Framework were finalised, ERS began producing the research tools. As the Arts Culture Sports programme worked with various age ranges of young people, ERS produced a suite of bespoke, participatory and creative research tools for each age group. This included an in-person visit to one of the Sports organisations to trial the research tools to incorporate young people’s voice into the effectiveness of them. Our team had success testing out the tools, but also returned with valuable feedback highlighting certain aspects of the tools that could be changed. This demonstrated the value of working directly with those groups being evaluated. Finally, ERS produced guidance and instructions for each set of tools to ensure future evaluators, alongside the programme organisations themselves, are able to confidently utilise and apply the evaluation framework and research tools.
