Evaluation is a word that often promotes feelings of fear and dread, or at least boredom on the part of injury prevention practitioners. It can conjure up images of horrible math tests from high school and uncomfortable job interviews or work performance reviews. For those who have worked in the public sector for a while, the word evaluation can also conjure up images of impersonal evaluation consultants breezing into the office for a few weeks, disrupting everyone's work patterns, and then producing a dry, technical report that no-one will ever read, unless of course, they are looking for an excuse to attack the program that was evaluated or to appropriate the program’s budget.

It does not have to be that way. Indeed, when conducted responsibly and with a focus on the information needs of IP program stakeholders and the usefulness of results, evaluation can be a positive force for organizational and program development (e.g. breathing new life into old, established injury prevention programs & helping to focus new ones).

In addition, developing your staff members’ expertise, knowledge and skills in evaluation can be very useful in meeting the accountability demands of the organizations that fund your IP programs and projects.