Hello my name is Tarek Azzam and I am an assistant research faculty member at Claremont Graduate University. I am interested in incorporating geography into our evaluation analysis, and reporting. I’ve found many tools that can help us do this through the use of GIS enabled websites like maps.google.com and many-eyes.com.
Hot Tip: you can use google to create maps that help you represent the location of different program sites, within these maps you can include information about the program performance through written descriptions or by color coding the icons to indicate high or low levels of performance (e.g. red icons=poor performance, green icons=excellent performance). Google maps also provides a street view of the neighborhoods that you can use to get a sense of the community condition. Website: maps.google.com
Hot Tip: many-eyes.com is a website that allows you to create interactive GIS maps with data you collect. For example, you can map changes in academic performance across various counties in a state by importing this data from an excel sheet into Many-eyes.com. The GIS software will create a color coded map that shows you how different counties performed on this indicator (typically the darker the color the higher the performance). This gives you a quick visual of how the program might have influenced different geographic regions (and may drive additional inquiry). Website: many-eyes.com
This contribution is from the aea365 Daily Tips blog, by and for evaluations, from the American Evaluation Association. Please consider contributing – send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org.
Thanks Tarek!
Those interested in GIS, may also be interested in NonprofitGIS, a repository of GIS info (how to, data sets, etc.) for the nonprofit sector http://ow.ly/SSvV. Recommended by another member, it appears to have good ‘how to’ info.