Everyone accepts the necessity of evaluating an event after it was completed but how to evaluate an event is a big question for many event organizers. Everybody agrees that, after the implementation of an event, the final evaluation should be taken into consideration and carried out thoroughly.
The purpose of evaluation
The purpose of evaluation is to have a general look and examine how the event went together with what should be done for better future events. The main purposes of evaluation of an events are:
- -To measure whether the event has met its predetermined measurable targets.
- -To find out if the event meets the expectations of all participants.
- -To keep track of feedback is important to improve the success of your future events.
Understanding the significance of evaluation
Evaluation is usually disregarded after the event. However, evaluation gives the organization various perspectives gained from the event management. From the evaluation session, the event planners can learn from their experience and gain deeper understanding of operational success, etc.
In the evaluation process, both clients and stakeholders in events insist a report on how their resources have been used and to which extent objectives have been accomplished.
Some others also places importance on the impact of events such as economic, political, physical etc. impact on the community itself. Those impacts can also be included in the evaluation process. Moreover, the social impact can be seen through the enhancement of community spirit and the outcome of social benefits as well.
Collecting information
Collecting information for the evaluation process should not be dismissed and needs to be conducted carefully and appropriately. The amount of information depends on each event in terms of size, scale, participants etc. However, the amount of information will exceed one’s expectations even if it is such a small event where there is no formal research conducted. The collected sources of information should be well-analyzed, or else the analysis would be subjectively done, i.e. based on someone’s opinion. The analysis, of course, turns out to invalid and worthless.
Evaluation process, in general, has placed an emphasis on two prime issues:
1. Did the event meet its objective?
2. What can be improved for the next edition, if there is one?
When it comes to organizing events, identifying the core objectives is highly crucial because it helps event organizers and coordinators to focus on what should be done to reach the objectives. Event objectives also play a vital role in assuring stakeholders the event’s effectiveness. Overall, stakeholders want to make sure that event organizers coordinators really put the money to work by spending it effectively and wisely.
After the process of collecting all of the essential information, what is best and what is worst are sorted out. Therefore, having knowledge of “what is best” and “what is worst” can lead to remedies which can boost up the satisfaction and reduce the dissatisfaction. As a consequence, it is highly recommended to rank “what is worst” problems, i.e. from “most serious to least serious” or from “most frequently to least frequently”. The task of ranking is certainly favorable to event organizers and coordinators because they will be able to perceive which problems reoccur several times. From that point of view, they could give priority to each problem and try to sort them all out in order of precedence.
Apart from those sources of information, both qualitative and quantitative data can also be used in the evaluation process as shown on the table.
