A Search to Capture and Report on Feasibility of Implementation - rubric-based evaluation tool development, analysis, and reporting

Oct 15, 2026

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This brief report describes the conception, development, and use of a rubric that evaluates the feasibility of implementing a new program. Evaluators sought a meta-analytic tool to structure ideas about what data to collect and why, enabling an accessible, useful narrative for clients. The rubric-based approach highlights concrete evaluative criteria, reviews rubric use in evaluation, demonstrates a feasibility-of-implementation rubric, and concludes with recommendations arising from its use.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Keywords

Checklists and Rubrics

Checklist vs rubric approach

Evaluation and metaevaluation

Rubric as a communication and reporting framework

Program feasibility rubric development

A Search to Capture and Report on Feasibility of Implementation Shandy Hauk 1,2 and Joyce Kaser 1 American Journal of Evaluation 2020, Vol. 41(1) 145-155 ª The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/1098214019878784](DOI: 10.1177/1098214019878784)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/1098214019878784)[journals.sagepub.com/home/aje](journals.sagepub.com/home/aje) Abstract This brief report describes the conception, development, and use of a rubric in evaluating the feasibility of a new program. The evaluators searched for a meta-analytic tool to help organize ideas about what data to collect, and why, in order to create a detailed story of feasibility of implementation for the client. The main advantage of using the rubric-based tool is that it lays out key evaluative criteria that are defined as concretely as possible. The article gives a brief overview of the literature on the use of rubrics in evaluation, illustrates the use of a feasibility of implementation rubric as a tool for development, analysis, and reporting, and concludes with recommendations emergent from the use of the rubric. Keywords rubric, feasibility of implementation, program evaluation “I just want to know if it works!” she wailed. “I can tell you that,” I replied.“But first you have to tell me what ‘it works’ means. And to get there, we need to be really clear on what the ‘it’ is.” As this exchange illustrates, one of the ever-present challenges for evaluators is collecting and reporting data to tell a meaningful story to a client. Recently evaluators at WestEd, an educational research, development, and service organization, found themselves in need ofa tool that would help to do just that—determine whether and how a program was being implemented and report the results in a way that was accessible and useful for the client. We were looking for a meta-analytic evaluation tool that would help organize thinking about what data to collect and why. The device also would organize the results of analysis of data to tell a detailed story for a client that had requested an external evaluation of a new mathematics curriculum. This note documents how the authors developed this tool, what we learned from its revision and use, and how our experience and the rubric-based tool may be useful to other evaluators and 1 WestEd, San Francisco, CA, USA 2 San Francisco State University, CA, USA Corresponding Author: Shandy Hauk, 400 Seaport Ct., Ste 222, Redwood City, CA 94063, USA. Email: [shauk@wested.org](shauk@wested.org) researchers. Certainly, any strong evaluation gets at similar information. This note is about a key piece of methodology for evaluation colleagues. Rubrics allow evaluation “to surface and deal with values in a more transparent way ... when evaluators and evaluation stakeholders get clearer about values, evaluative judgments become more credible and warrantable”(King, McKegg, Oakden, & Wehipeihana, 2013, p. 11) . Evaluation is aimed at assessing what people know and do in a particular context. Metaevaluation is about what evaluators themselves know and do. The evaluation context for the rubric-based tool presented here was the implementation of a new curriculum. The metaevaluative aim was assessing what the authors knew and did in using the tool for evaluating the feasibility of the curricular implementation. Like an evaluation checklist, the tool documented details of “practitioner experience, theory, principles, and research to support evaluators in their work”(The Evaluation Center, 2019) . In addition, the rubric-based tool was a touchstone throughout client communication and a framework for the final reporting on the evaluation itself. Checklists and Rubrics Checklists are valuable evaluative tools. For example, the Checklist of Steps and Standards for the Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health (MacD

FAQs

What purpose does the rubric serve in evaluating feasibility of implementation?

The rubric organizes ideas about what data to collect and why, providing concrete evaluative criteria to support development, analysis, and reporting of feasibility for clients.

How does the report compare checklists and rubrics?

Checklists focus on verb-based steps evaluators do, while rubrics focus on noun-based knowledge—what evaluators seek to know in, for, or through those steps.

What context and meta-evaluative aim guide the rubric-based tool?

The context is implementation of a new curriculum, and the metaevaluative aim assesses what the authors knew and did when using the tool to evaluate feasibility of curricular implementation.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper