When measuring change, you’re measuring outcomes. Outcomes can be short-term, mid-term, and long- term.

Outcome measurement is most commonly done by conducting pre and post surveys at different time points, for example, during the activities and 3 months after the activity. In these pre and post surveys, participants indicate their knowledge, skill and behaviour before and after the activity has taken place.

Data may also be gathered through storytelling or dialogue such as interviews, focus groups, or talking circles.

Short-term outcome measurement tracks what happens immediately as a result of what you’re doing, for example, increasing knowledge about a topic. Mid or long-term outcome measurement tracks changes after an activity has happened, for example, by tracking a change in behaviour.

Short-term outcome measurement

Let’s suppose the Facebook live event from above is a webinar of sorts, that talks about how to have a conversation with someone who is considering suicide. The goal of offering the webinar is to help people become more confident having that conversation. Is the webinar having that effect? You can measure this outcome by asking participants how they feel before and after the webinar. Using pre and post surveys, ask participants to rate their confidence levels, on a scale of 1-10. For example, ‘How confident do you feel to talk to someone considering suicide?’ Then, compare the before and after ratings. This gives you an outcome measure for this question.

Compiling these data from many participants can give you a picture of how well the webinar is accomplishing the goal.

This approach can be expanded to ask other questions pertaining to this specific activity, or scaled to ask questions of the overarching Plan, too. You can also measure medium-term outcomes by asking the same questions again a few months later. Now you are trying to determine if the immediate learning ‘stuck’ – do people report the same level of confidence they did immediately following the webinar? This gives you insight into how participants integrated the change into their behaviour.

Long-term outcome measurement

Measuring long-term outcomes (or impacts) is important, too! In this example, we are gathering qualitative data instead of using rating scales.

Let’s say you want to know if, after attending the webinar from the example above, participants are more likely to engage with people considering suicide.

Set up interview times where you can talk with a sample of participants, individually. Ask them questions, such as, ‘How has what you learned in the workshop: shifted your beliefs about suicide?; changed your ability to help others?; deepened your compassion for others?’

When you gather all of the responses, compare them to identify themes that emerge. Do the themes match your goal? Are people more likely to engage with someone considering suicide?

Qualitative data can be more difficult to interpret but it can also provide information that is difficult to capture in a rating scale. Using both approaches can give a fuller picture than using only one.