Veteran Transition Program Outcome Evaluation Plan
This paper presents a six-step outcome evaluation plan for a Veteran Transition Program administered by a community-based family services agency. The evaluation aims to assess the program's effectiveness in helping veterans successfully transition into civilian life and improve their quality of life, primarily to secure additional funding. Drawing on empirical literature documenting the housing, employment, and mental health challenges veterans face post-service, the paper outlines strategies for engaging stakeholders, describing the program and its logic model, focusing the evaluation design, gathering credible quantitative evidence, justifying conclusions, and disseminating findings. A proposed budget, sampling strategy, data collection instrument, and discussion of the four evaluation standards — utility, feasibility, accuracy, and propriety — are also included.
- Introduction and Program Overview: Evaluation purpose and program goals introduced
- Step 1: Engaging Stakeholders: Identifying and involving key program stakeholders
- Step 2: Program Description and Evidence Base: Program context and supporting empirical literature
- Step 3: Focusing the Evaluation Design: Core evaluation question and outcome focus defined
- Step 4: Gathering Credible Evidence: Data methods, sampling, timeline, and budget
- Step 5: Justifying Conclusions: Analysis procedures and interpretation standards
- Step 6: Ensuring Use of Findings and Sharing Lessons Learned: Dissemination strategies and evaluation standards
- Conclusion: Summary of evaluation plan and stakeholder confidence
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper follows a clear, prescribed six-step framework and applies it consistently, giving readers a logical and easy-to-follow structure from stakeholder engagement through to the dissemination of findings.
- Empirical literature is integrated into the program description to justify the intervention's design, lending credibility to the evaluation rationale before data collection even begins.
- Practical details — a sampling procedure, a proposed budget table, a timeline, and a full data collection instrument — ground the plan in operational reality rather than remaining purely theoretical.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied program evaluation methodology, specifically outcome evaluation aligned with the CDC's six-step framework. It effectively connects program theory (the logic model and evidence base) with measurement strategy (quantitative surveys, systematic sampling, ordinal scoring) and accountability standards (utility, feasibility, accuracy, propriety), showing how evaluation design decisions flow from the program's goals and the needs of its primary audience — funding agencies.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief framing of the evaluation purpose, then works sequentially through the six CDC evaluation steps, each serving as a major section. Within Step 2, a subsection addresses the empirical evidence supporting the intervention. Step 4 is the most detailed, covering data sources, sampling, timeline, and budget. Steps 5 and 6 address analytical procedures and dissemination, respectively, before a brief synthesis conclusion. An appendix contains the data collection questionnaire.
Introduction and Program Overview
This paper presents an outcome evaluation plan whose aim is to assess the effectiveness of a new Veteran Transition Program administered by a community-based family services agency (referred to here as NCCFS) in order to secure additional funding. The Veteran Transition Program serves two crucial aims: (i) to help veterans transition successfully into civilian life and (ii) to improve veterans' quality of life. The paper outlines the specific strategies that the agency will employ under the CDC's six-step program evaluation framework to ensure that the evaluation exercise is a success.
Step 1: Engaging Stakeholders
Stakeholders are organizations or people affected or served by the program, those involved in program operations, and the intended users of the evaluation results. Stakeholders served by the program include local community members, veterans, and their families. The intended users of the evaluation results include funding agencies, law-enforcement representatives, program managers, and state agencies serving veterans. Stakeholders involved in program activities include program staff, faith-based organizations, state education agencies, local community members, and housing authorities.
From these groups, key stakeholders are those needed to increase the credibility of the evaluation and those responsible for making implementation, funding, or advocacy decisions (CDC, 2012). The final list of key stakeholders thus includes state and local agencies serving veterans, faith-based organizations, schools, state education agencies, program staff, housing authorities, law-enforcement representatives, the media, and funding agencies. Representatives from each stakeholder group will be engaged through focus group meetings held every two months and periodic emails. The agency will use the focus groups to engage stakeholders on why they are interested in the program, what elements of the program are most relevant to them, their expectations regarding the program, what critical questions to include in the evaluation, how they will use the evaluation results, and what specific resources they will contribute to the evaluation (Ray & Miller, 2017).
All stakeholders will be allowed to provide input on evaluation questions and the design of the data collection instrument. However, since the primary aim of the evaluation is to secure funding, stakeholders responsible for making funding decisions will be responsible for choosing the most appropriate evaluation questions, while those involved in the program — such as program staff — will be responsible for disseminating results.
References
Ahern, J., Worthen, M., Masters, J., Lippman, S. A., Ozer, E. J., & Moos, R. (2015). The challenges of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans' transition from military to civilian life and approaches to reconnection. PLOS ONE, 10(7), 1–13.
CDC. (2012). Step 6: Ensure use of evaluation findings and share lessons learned. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/eval/guide/step6/index.htm
Kellogg Foundation. (2004). Logic model development guide. Battle Creek, MI: Author.
NCCFS. (2020). Resources for veterans. North Carolina Center for Child and Family Services. Retrieved from
Posavac, E. J. (2015). Program evaluation: Methods and case studies. New York, NY: Routledge.
Ray, K. N., & Miller, E. (2017). Strengthening stakeholder engaged research and research on stakeholder engagement. Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research, 6(4), 375–389.
Sayer, N. A., Orazem, R., Noorbaloochi, S., Gravely, A., Frazier, P., & Carlson, K. (2015). Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans with reintegration problems: Differences by Veterans Affairs healthcare user status. Administration and Policy in Mental Health, 42(1), 493–503.
Stufflebeam, D. L., & Zhang, J. (2017). The CIPP evaluation model: How to evaluate for improvement and accountability. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Walker, J. T., & Maddan, S. (2013). Understanding statistics for the social sciences, criminal justice, and criminology. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett.
Appendix: Data Collection Instrument
North Carolina Center for Child and Family Services — Veteran Transition Program Evaluation Questionnaire
This questionnaire is for an evaluation that seeks to assess the effectiveness of the Veterans Transition Program, for which you are a beneficiary. All responses are entirely confidential and will be used solely for purposes of the current evaluation. The questionnaire will take between 10 and 15 minutes to complete.
1. Have you been a beneficiary of the Veteran Transition Program's transitional housing initiative, which provides temporary housing to veterans and their families at risk of homelessness?
Yes ________ No ________
2. If yes, to what extent has the program helped to minimize your risk of homelessness?
Very great extent _____ Great extent _____ Moderate extent _____ None at all _____
3. Did you know how to file for disability/educational entitlements before joining the program?
Yes __________ No __________
4. Can you now file for disability/educational entitlements using skills learned in the program?
Yes __________ No __________
5. Have you successfully filed for disability and educational entitlements for veterans using skills learned in the program?
Yes ________ No ________
6. Have you managed to secure employment as a result of the job skills learned in the program?
Yes _________ No _________
7. To what extent have the job skills gained through the program helped you in your current job?
Very great extent _____ Great extent _____ Moderate extent _____ None at all _____
8. How would you rate your mental well-being:
i) Before joining the program:
Very Good ________ Good ________ Poor ________ Very Poor ________
ii) Now:
Very Good ________ Good ________ Poor ________ Very Poor ________
9. To what extent has the program helped to improve the quality of life for you and your family, as measured by the following indicators (from "very great extent" to "none at all")?
i) Availability of basic necessities:
Very great extent ________ Great extent ________ Moderate extent ________ None at all ________
ii) Access to education for children:
Very great extent ________ Great extent ________
iii) Access to educational supports in school for children:
Very great extent ________ Great extent ________ Moderate extent ________ None at all ________
For broader context on challenges facing returning service members, see the Wikipedia overview of veteran transition to civilian life and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs resources on veteran homelessness.
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