Making a Difference: A guide to evaluating .public participation in.central government - Involve

About the Guide

• Introduction
• 1 How can evaluation help?
• 2 Public engagement in public policy-making
• 3 Thinking about objectives
• 4 When to start evaluation
• 5 Measuring success
• 6 Doing the evaluation: What should it cover?
• 7 Doing the evaluation: How to do it
• 8 After the evaluation
• Annex 1: Glossary
• Annex 2: Costs and benefits of engagement
• Annex 3: Your Health, Your Care, Your Say - a case example of evaluation
• Annex 4: Principles of good practice
• Annex 5: Guides to engagement

About the authors and funders

For questions or feedback
please contact the Involve team on:
evaluation@involve.org.uk
or 020 7632 0120

Download the full Evaluation Guide as a pdf document

Annex 4:

Principles of good practice

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This Annex includes principles of good practice from three major national and international sources with extensive experience of public engagement: Involve, the International Association of Public Participation, and The Environment Council. Clearly, different principles will apply depending on the type of engagement exercise being planned, so the following provide a range of options.

Involve

Involve’s People and Participation. How to put citizens at the centre of decision-making (2005) proposes the following principles of good practice in public engagement:

• Makes a difference. The purpose of participation is to achieve change in relation to the purpose identified; it may also make a difference to all those involved in terms of learning, confidence and sense of active citizenship. This requires active commitment to change by all parties.
• Voluntary. People may be encouraged to be involved, and even paid for involvement, but effective participation requires them to choose to be involved. Participation cannot be compulsory.
• Transparency, honesty and clarity about the purpose, the limits (what can and cannot be changed), who can be involved and how, and what happens as a result (next steps).
• Adequate resources, to manage the process well, and to deliver on the results.
• Appropriate participants, representative and/or inclusive, depending on the purpose of the exercise, with traditionally excluded groups given special support and encouragement when their involvement is appropriate.
• Accessibility, so no participant is excluded because of lack of physical access to meeting places, timing, appropriate support (e.g. child care), etc.
• Accountability. Participatory processes need to be accountable to all those involved (including the organisation that may be running / commissioning the exercise, and to the wider 'community'). This requires good record-keeping and reporting of both processes and outcomes.
• Power. Participatory processes should have sufficient power to achieve the agreed objectives. This may require a change in the existing power sharing arrangements.
• Learning and development. Participatory processes should seek to support a climate of mutual learning and development among all those involved.

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