Desired Outcomes
Most groups want to describe the results of their work. In everyday conversation, people use the terms “results”, “outcomes”, and “impacts” to mean essentially the same thing – that is, what happened as a consequence of what you did. However, evaluators make distinctions between the terms “outcomes” and “impacts.” Those distinctions reflect whether or not the evaluator used particular quantitative methods to determine not just what happened, but its cause. So, in evaluation the term “outcome” refers to a particular state of being (a set of conditions, experiences or behaviors – that is the goal for change or improvement). When reporting the results of an evaluation, the outcome refers to what was achieved. For example, an outcome could be “all children are reading on grade level by the end of third grade,” or “the school system is fully prepared to support children of immigrants and refugees when they first enter the school system.”
</p [...]
“Action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all.”
~ Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor
SPOTLIGHT
Also in this section:
GLOSSARY