Evaluating Dancing With Parkinson’s: Reflections from the perspective of a community organization.

Autor: Gibson, Rachael; Robichaud, Sarah

Publication year: 2020

Evaluation and program planning

issn:1873-7870 0149-7189

doi: 10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2017.05.010

Abstract:

In 2015, Dancing With Parkinson’s (DWP), a Toronto-based community organization, participated in the Ontario Brain Institute’s (OBI) newly launched Evaluation Support Program. This paper reflects on that experience. In particular, we identify the key lessons derived from the OBI initiative, discuss how these lessons have informed DWP practice going forward, and highlight what we consider to be the most valuable aspects of the Evaluation Support Program. While we now recognize the need to establish an evaluation culture within DWP, we find that there are significant challenges associated with both building and sustaining evaluation capacity in the context of a small community-based organization. Whereas DWP has built considerable strengths in terms of informal evaluation capacity, on its own, such capacity is insufficient to, for example, demonstrate DWP’s impact to outside audiences or successfully scale up the program.

Language: eng

Pmid: 28578854

Tags: Humans; *Parkinson Disease; Evaluation capacity building; Program Evaluation; Community organization; Organizations; Implementation; Ontario; Parkinson’s disease; Sustainability

Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28578854/