it, if you have written memos throughout the course of your evaluation, you will find it
extremely helpful when you need to sit down and write the findings (and your final
evaluation report). In some cases, if you are thorough and consistent with writing
memos, entire sections of your findings will have already been written.
An Example of an Analytical Memo
We thought it would be good to show you an example of a memo. Below is an example
of raw data (in excerpts) from interviews TCEC carried out in order to evaluate our
Spring 2011 Regional Trainings on “Designing Effective Surveys.” The memo that was
written was based on the raw data. The following are excerpts from the raw data:
“I thought it was really quite useful. I think in the work we do in tobacco that
there’s a lot of webinars, and it’s really easy to listen to a webinar without
actually listening. You can turn it on and still answer emails or do whatever you
would normally do. But going in person gives you the time and lets you step out
of your day to concentrate on that. And I think the exercises we did were the
most productive part of the training.” (Onsite: Interview #7)
“Oh yeah, I would get more out of the face to face. I am a hands-on, visual
person, so for anything in person will always help me gain more out of it. But
with the travel constraints and so forth, it was nice just to be able to gain the
information through the webcast.” (Remote: Interview #1)
“Sometimes webinars can be great, and at the same time they’re not great,
because when you’re doing a webinar at your desk, you’re doing other work, and
you’re not really listening. So you don’t really grasp things fully in the webinar.
That's what I liked about the training, we listened, we were focused, we were
there, and we did exercises, so I liked the format a lot.” (Onsite: Interview #15)
“It fulfilled my needs fine because of time and cost, but if I had wanted more in
depth and had been able to go, I would have chosen the in person [format]. I
feel that webinars are very isolating. I like being able to have the interactions.
But if you have to choose between time and money and all those things,
webinars can fill the gap.” (Remote: Interview #6)
Here is an example of an analytic memo based on the raw data from above:
The notion that the onsite training was “interactive” and “face-to-face” and therefore
seemed enjoyable and more helpful was often stated in contrast of trainings that are
conducted via webinar. Participants tended to feel strongly that the onsite training—in
contrast to a remote, webinar training—provided them benefits that they could not have
obtained from a webinar alone. This idea was described in various fashions from both
onsite and webinar participants, but the theme remained the same. Again, the seeming
benefits of “interactivity” and learning concepts by “doing exercises” was most easily
seen when participants contrasted it with what they considered the drawbacks of a
remote webinar training. The drawbacks of a webinar, besides the lack of hands on
exercises and face-to-face interactions, included the fact that following along with a