Download the full Evaluation Guide as a pdf documentThinking about objectives
It may therefore make sense to identify different objectives for the different stages or parts of the process (see below).
Example 2
Objectives for the National Waste Dialogue
Stage 1 - Building Effective Solutions for Sustainable Waste Management (1999-2001), expressed its aims and objectives in the form of two questions:
- What are the key issues affecting progress towards sustainable waste management?
- What can we do to address barriers to progress?
Stage 2 - Enabling Sustainable Waste Management (2001-2002), expressed its objectives in the following three point mission statement:
- To tackle the complex and contentious issues surrounding the planning and decision-making process for new waste facilities;
- To make recommendations on how these issues can be addressed;
- To build relationships and understanding among stakeholders engaged in and affected by waste related decision-making.
Stage 3 - Successful Waste Awareness Campaigns (Cultural Change toolkit) (2001-2003), had the following objectives:
- To produce a toolkit that will enable people to run successful waste awareness campaigns that lead to the reduction of waste and promotion of recycling;
- To evaluate previous campaigns and assess them against identified key success criteria;
- To enable more effective waste-awareness campaigns to be run in the future;
- To accelerate the change in culture as to how people deal with their waste.
As can be seen from Example 2, the National Waste Dialogue, there were different levels of activity and involvement implied in these objectives, from broad policy development at Stage 1 to detailed development and production of materials in Stage 3. In this case, the same method was used throughout the process: a formal stakeholder dialogue to build consensus among participants. This was supplemented by working groups that actually developed research and product outlines.
In setting objectives, it helps to establish the nature of the engagement very early on. The usual approach is to think about the depth of influence the public will have.