By NEON Establishing Evidence and Measuring Impact Working Group Chair, Hannah Merry, Head of Higher Horizons Operations
What is the NEON Evaluation Working Group?
NEON has always believed in the importance of evidence and evaluation, and provided a space for practitioners to come together to share their evaluation findings. We currently have a small number of working group meetings a year where volunteers present on any work related to data and evaluation. The topics can range from different methods of evaluation, to how people have approached evaluating their new APP, to evaluation of national programmes like Uni Connect. People have presented on creative methods of evaluation, causal evaluation such as propensity score matching and RCTs, HESA tracking data, and evaluation findings from specific projects or programmes. The webinars are a really great chance to hear from colleagues about the work they’re doing, and meet other people working in this space… you might even meet people working on similar projects but evaluating them in different ways, so you can compare methods and develop your own evaluations.
You don’t have to commit to coming to every meeting and can drop in and out as you see fit. We publish details of the presentations at each session on the website so you can see if they are relevant to your work.
Who organises the Evaluation Working Group?
The Group has been convened by EMWPREP for many years, but is currently being organised by Higher Horizons, one of the Uni Connect partnerships. The current Chair is Hannah Merry. Hannah is a practitioner with an interest in data and evaluation, who has been the Chair of the EMWPREP tracker for eight years.
We are always looking for people to present, so if you’re interested please contact Hannah Merry on h.k.merry1@keele.ac.uk
Is this a group for evaluators or practitioners?
Yes! We welcome anyone regardless of their level of knowledge or expertise with evaluation. The Group is a friendly and welcoming space for anyone with an interest in evaluation. We want the Group to remain inclusive and welcome both practitioners who may be new to evaluation, practitioners who are more confident with evaluation, as well as specialised evaluators who can share their work in an accessible way. We believe it is important that practitioners and evaluators work together and understand each other’s work so we can better work together to evaluate the impact of our activities.
How do I find out about meetings?
The best place to stay up to date with the Group is on NEON’s website. You can find the dates of upcoming meetings, the topics we’ll be discussing, and book to come along. The webinars are totally free for NEON members.