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Hold Team Meetings . Monitor and Evaluate Your Efforts . Sustain Your SART . Know Your Team . Critical Issues
Types of Evaluation
Process Evaluation
Much of the information in this section was adapted from Nicole Allen and Leslie Hagen, 2003, A Practical Guide to Evaluating Domestic Violence Coordinating Councils, Harrisburg, PA: National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, 9–42.
A process evaluation examines how your team functions. Use it to help you address the quality of your team's—
Interagency Working Environment
Research suggests that the internal working climate that [teams] foster is an important part of their success. . . . [Teams] handling conflict effectively are more likely to generate creative solutions, encourage needed changes, and avoid 'groupthink.'10
Evaluating your team's working environment can include assessing whether your team has a shared interagency mission, the effectiveness of its decisionmaking process, and the ways that it manages conflict. A process evaluation would provide important information about where changes are needed to improve the team's functioning.
Consider asking team members the following questions when evaluating your team's working environment:
To what degree has the team developed a shared mission?
To what degree do members feel their input informs team decisionmaking?
To what degree are disagreements handled effectively?
When surveying team members, make sure to maximize confidentiality so that all members feel free to candidly share their beliefs about how the team functions.
There are many different ways that disagreements can be handled. In general, getting to the root of the problem is thought to be the most effective strategy. Compromising, agreeing to disagree, or ignoring conflict is commonly employed by teams, but they are not always effective because they often leave root causes unresolved.
Infrastructure can refer to how your team is organized, who your team members are, and how effective your team leadership is. Assessing infrastructure is important because there is a positive correlation between organizational capacity and team effectiveness.
Determine whether the team is organized by asking team members the following questions: Does the team have—
Determine the adequacy and involvement of the team's membership by asking members to rate the level of participation by each agency and the level of training and expertise among SART members.
The following table is one example of this type of evaluation.
Agency | Discipline | Participation Level (1–5) |
Areas of Training/Experience (examples) |
---|---|---|---|
Rape crisis center | Advocacy | (1=inactive and 5=very active) | Sexual assault trauma and healing, advocacy, criminal justice, civil justice, health care, court monitoring, immigration, bilingual fluency, evaluation, community education, disabilities, care of older adults, substance abuse, community organizing, writing, and so forth |
Police department, sheriff's office, dispatch | Law enforcement | ||
Prosecuting attorney's office | Prosecuting attorney | ||
Hospital, forensic examiner organization, EMS | Health care |
Determine whether leadership is effective by asking team members to rate the following statements regarding team leadership:
In conducting a process evaluation of your SART's activities, you will be asking team members to gauge their satisfaction with the team's activities. For example, you may want to ask your SART members the following questions:
In This Toolkit:
- Needs Assessment Survey (Word) Helps gather data on statewide resources to plan for the development of resources.
- SANE Prosecution Survey (Word) Assesses the multidisciplinary activities of prosecutors' offices.
Collaboration Factors Inventory Asks survey questions to help assess factors that influence successful collaboration.
To what degree have team efforts increased collaboration and communication? [Rate responses from 1 to 5.]
To what degree have team efforts increased the exchange of information, resources, and client referrals?
To help answer this question, you could create a survey that lists the number of times per month that team members communicate across agencies. For example, team members might record and report how many times per month they have contacted interdisciplinary agencies, referred victims, or received referrals (see sample survey below).
Name of Agency (completing form) _______________________________
Agency Name | Number of Times I Exchanged Information | Number of Referrals I Gave | Number of Referrals I Received |
Rape crisis center | 3 | 5 | 1 |
SANE program | 5 | 1 | 3 |
Faith-based organization | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Law enforcement | 1 | 3 | 1 |
To what degree have team efforts increased service providers' knowledge of community resources?
You may want to develop a process survey to determine team members' understanding of available community services. Consider the following services: