Event Evaluation A community/local government perspective Emma Wood - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Event Evaluation

A community/local government perspective

Emma Wood

International Centre for Research in Events, Tourism and Hospitality Leeds Beckett University

Gothenburg, March 2015

past to present

• quantitative to qualitative to mixed
• one off to multi-event, longitudinal
• economic to social to personal
• standardised to tailored to mixed
• reality to rhetoric
• use to advocacy

current thoughts

• tailored to objectives and resources
• allow for comparison with other interventions

aimed at achieving same objectives

• longitudinal vital
• involve stakeholders in a more meaningful way to

encourage ‘use’

• recognise all influences on the

effect being evaluated

• greater focus on attribution

current challenges

• seeing the value in evaluation
• seeing the value in qualitative
• robust replicable methodologies
• limited accuracy of surveys
• designing engaging,

meaningful surveys

• reliable crowd counts
• over emphasis on headline

figures

• bad big samples
• isolated evaluations

“Tour de France boost £50m greater than anticipated”

future challenges

• increasing funder demands
• increasing emphasis on PR outcomes (advocacy)
• more austerity – need for greater evidence and less

money to get it

• rhetoric is all about social but reality is still about ROI

in economic terms

• greater focus on insights rather than measures needed,

action research

• developing holistic evaluation of the effect ie evaluate

‘all’ the causes

“The austerity and re-balancing agenda effectively removes the mandate to weigh up long-run cost benefit decisions”

in summary

• we need to be less precious about always proving

the value of events

• focus more on understanding how events might
• r might not contribute to wider social,

behaviour change goals

• requires longitudinal insight research which

includes more than events

• takes a holistic view

with focus on effects and attribution even if beyond events