We’ve recently been hearing how hard it is to get a decent number of responses to a survey. And we’ve also heard from people who are working on projects where there is reluctance to send out “yet another survey”, because they think farmers are feeling over-surveyed. So we wondered whether survey fatigue is really true and what we might do to overcome it. To start with, we should emphasise… Read more »Are you struggling with survey fatigue?
As enablers of change, we sometimes find ourselves navigating the interesting landscape of evaluation and data analysis. Within this space, two foundational concepts emerge: causation and correlation. In this episode, we explore the subtle yet critical difference between these concepts. Causation is a critical concept for us as enablers of change. Causation involves establishing a direct cause-and-effect connection between two variables. In other words, when one variable changes, it… Read more »Understanding causation and correlation
Theory of change and logic frameworks are two popular approaches for planning, monitoring and evaluating extension projects. They both aim to show how an intervention leads to desired outcomes and impacts, but they differ in their focus, format and purpose. In this episode, we’ll explain the differences between these two methods and how they can be used effectively in different contexts. We’ve previously discussed how a Theory of change (ToC)… Read more »How Theories of change and logframes differ
How many biases do you think we have? Whether we like to admit it or not, we all have biases that affect aspects of our lives and the lives of others with whom we interact—but it turns out there are ways to at least minimise our bias. This is important for us as enablers of change because we are often working people in a professional setting, and without knowing… Read more »Reducing our biases
In a recent episode we talked through designing a decent survey, but of course that is only one part of the bigger picture. To boost the number of responses to our surveys, should we offer an incentive to our potential survey respondents? If we were to offer an incentive, what should it be? In this episode we’ll explore what the research says about this! There has actually been some… Read more »Boosting survey responses
Surveys seem to be a constant in life at the moment! Like the old quote about the only certainties being death and taxes—it seems that everyone (and their dog) would like you to just fill in this quick survey or answer a short series of questions! As enablers of change, surveys are an important part of our toolkit. So just what do we need to know when designing a… Read more »Designing a decent survey
Have you ever almost finished running an event, and as people are heading out the door to go home, thought to yourself—I should have checked how that session went? What one simple tool can you use to do this? In today’s episode we’re going to explore a simple but effective evaluation tool for the enablers of change toolbox—the dartboard. As the name suggests the evaluation dartboard uses the picture… Read more »A simple but effective evaluation tool… the dartboard!
When you’ve been invited to give a presentation and you walk out on the stage—or step up onto a wooden box at the front of a farmer’s shed—and you look into the eyes of the audience, wouldn’t it be great if you could read their minds to know just what they wanted to hear from you? No, we don’t mean some kind of science fiction mind control, but close to… Read more »How to easily use online polls and surveys
Evaluation shouldn’t be just the add-on at the end of a project – it’s a core skill for enablers of change like ourselves! So let’s explore one framework for evaluation that’s been around for sometime – Bennett’s Hierarchy. In this blog post we’re going to explore what Bennett’s Hierarchy is and give you a few pointers for using it. To set the scene for this we head back to the… Read more »Bennett’s hierarchy: a simple yet powerful evaluation framework
