Self-evaluation Tool for Action in Partnership

Description

This tool provides members of a partnership with the opportunity to express perceptions and opinions on their partnership experiences. The tool’s 18 items are related to the following six requirements for effective partnership work:

1. the range of perspectives relevant to the issue
2. early stakeholder involvement in strategic decisions
3. engagement of stakeholders in negotiating and influencing decisions
4. commitment of strategic and pivotal stakeholders to the project
5. partnership arrangements that favour equalization of power among the stakeholders
6. partnership arrangements that help build collective action

Steps for Using Method/Tool

There are three options for using this tool:

1. The members conduct a group discussion and complete the 18 items of the tool together to come up with a collective evaluation.
2. Each member of the partnership answers the tool individually, and then discusses their responses as a group to come up with a collective evaluation.
3. Each member of the partnership answers the tool individually; members compile all the responses and then discuss the results together.

Particular attention may be paid to items for which results are less favourable.

For each item, respondents have to choose one of three options representing varying degrees of achievement of the item (strong, moderate, weak) in their partnership. Once the members have completed the 18 items of the tool, A, B and C responses can be compiled for each of the 18 items, for items related to each of the six requirements, or for all 18 items together.

Three types of partnership evaluation may be produced depending on how the tool is applied: a) a one-time evaluation, b) a longitudinal evaluation, or c) a summary portrait across multiple partnerships.

For this tool to work properly, the partnership should be: 1) more than a place for information-sharing and networking; 2) the venue for collaborative work on a specific project with resources.

Evaluation

The validity of the original French tool has been evaluated. It has been found to be sensitive to variations in judgement, to allow good convergence among respondents within the same partnership and to distinguish partnerships with better and worse results on one or another of the requirements. A rigorous procedure of translation and adaptation – which combined expert committee formulation from two parallel translations and a pretest with target users– ensures equivalence of the English version with the original French tool.

Validity

Construct validity and ecological validity were verified. The tool’s validity is supported by the soundness of its theoretical model that is based on a series of case studies using the sociology of Actor-Network Theory, and numerous literature reviews of the functioning of partnerships.