Once the questions are listed, ask yourself how you can find the answers. For instance, in the questions posed above, how will the organization find out if its action teams are diverse? Clearly, the organization must survey participants about their opinions, ages, ethnicity, income, neighborhood, and gender.

If the organization asks about gender, it will become apparent after just a few meetings if it lacks women. Then it can target that group to ensure (the operative word signaling success of the evaluation criteria) that the action teams become a good cross-section of participants.

In the first evaluation sample at the end of this chapter, one of the things the organization wants to learn is the long-term effect of a ninth-grade adventure-camp experience. The evaluator, therefore, might be asked to develop a series of surveys and other evaluative tools to test the effects. One could take place at the end of the camping experience, a second at the end of ninth grade, and the others could be scheduled annually thereafter. This might be the best way to determine whether the learning at the adventure camp has changed the lives of its participants, either for better or worse, and whether any short-term changes were sustained over time.

An evaluation of a hypothesis (for instance, that ninth graders will have a life-altering experience at an adventure camp) need not be proven true in order to have a successful evaluation. The evaluation is a success even if the hypothesis turns out to be false.