Center for Research, Evaluation, and Assessment
Database Development and Web Integration
Tracking program participants, the materials or resources they use or produce, their addresses and contact information, test scores or survey responses, dates and types of participation, and other information may be a daunting task, depending on the size of your project and the existing data management facilities in your organization. There are a wide variety of tools and software which can make these tasks less costly and more accurate, as well as making this information readily accessible to you and your staff.
In many cases, the information needed to manage a project or program overlaps significantly with the information needed to evaluate the program. For this reason, we encourage program developers, during the project planning stage, to think carefully about the kinds of information that will be needed for both these purposes, and to build a data management system early in the life of the project which can support both management and evaluation functions.
You may already have computing facilities and staff who are capable of building such a system. In this case, the primary assistance we can offer is in carefully planning the structure of the information management system, i.e. what kinds of information need to be gathered and organized. Alternatively, we can also provide you with assistance in the nuts and bolts of programming a custom database for your specific project management needs, integrated with the data collection system for your formative and summative evaluation.
In order to facilitate communication between project staff and participants at multiple sites, this data management system can also be made fully accessible through the world wide web, including password protection for various levels of access. Our programming staff can build custom systems to fit your needs, and streamline the integration of this system with online data collection systems for program evaluation.