This guide brings together NPC’s pioneering impact practice resources to offer practical guidance to Building Connections Fund Grant Holders and others working on reducing loneliness.
It is designed to complement the What Works Centre for Wellbeing’s guidance A Brief Guide to measuring loneliness.
We need to understand more about the factors associated with loneliness, what the effects of loneliness are for different people and how we can prevent or alleviate it. This guidance is designed to help you evaluate your activities tackling loneliness and improve the sector’s understanding of what works. You do not need to have any prior knowledge of impact measurement or evaluation.
Evaluation is about asking and answering some of the most fundamental questions:
- Are we making a difference?
- How can we improve?
- Are we reaching the right people?
- How does our programme lead to change?
It is about developing an approach to learning about what changes occur, how change happens, and what causes change.
This document has been produced for Building Connections Fund grant-holders but can be applied to any activities aimed at reducing loneliness.
This guidance consists of three sections:
Section 1 outlines the national measures of loneliness. All organisations working on tackling loneliness should consider if they can use these to evaluate their work.
Section 2 takes you through five steps for developing and implementing a measurement framework for evaluating your work.
Section 3 offers practical advice for using different approaches and methods for data collection and analysis. It also outlines key evaluation considerations relating to research ethics and data protection.