Support for monitoring and evaluation of primary prevention projects funded under the Victorian Free from Violence first action plan

ANROWS was contracted by the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet from June 2019 to December 2020 to provide monitoring and evaluation support to the Victorian Free from Violence initiative.

The work demonstrated ANROWS’s expanding expertise in project evaluation and evaluation capacity building and complemented ANROWS’s support to 35 local governments under the Local Government Free from Violence Grants Program.

Development of evaluation planning and reporting templates

ANROWS reviewed and revised the planning and evaluation templates for the Women’s Health Services, Prevention Practice Initiatives and Aboriginal Innovation Fund projects. Funded projects will use these templates to plan and report on their project evaluation.

The templates were:

• updated to improve ease of use and consistency of wording within and across templates
• modified to improve accessibility (screen reader-friendly)
• available in both Word and Excel formats

Tailored evaluation capacity building support

ANROWS provided monitoring and evaluation capacity building support to the funded projects, including:

• workshops in Ballarat, Dandenong, Horsham, Melbourne, and Sale (November 2019)
• online workshops (September-October 2020)
• one-on-one email and telephone support for  project officers
• community of practice meetings (December 2019-Februrary 2020).

The evaluation capacity building support focused on:

• using the new templates for project planning and evaluation
• undertaking evaluation planning and reporting
• choosing and applying appropriate data collection and analysis methods
• identifying strategies for inclusive evaluation
• embedding evaluation into regular and ongoing work by the organisation.

Synthesis reports

ANROWS conducted four syntheses of project reports across the Women’s Health Services and Prevention Practice Initiatives funding streams. These reports aggregated the results of project activities over the past 6-12 months.  In particular, the syntheses reported on:

• progress made on project activity
• progress against the Free from Violence indicators
• alignment of indicators, measures, data collection methods and results
• the focus and quality of case studies provided in project reports
• major themes in the key lessons learned by each project
• how the projects were using the templates
• areas for further improvement of the templates.

The Free from violence survey instrument

ANROWS collaborated with the University of Melbourne and the Social Research Centre to develop a validated and standardised evaluation survey instrument for primary prevention projects to track project-level and state-wide changes in knowledge of and attitudes toward family violence, gender equality and bystander interventions.

The questionnaire draws on items from the National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey (NCAS), the Personal Safety Survey (PSS), and OurWatch’s Workplace Equality and Respect materials. It also includes bespoke items developed for this survey through consultation with key stakeholders, covering family violence involving women with disabilities, older women, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and LGBTQI+ communities. Feedback on the instrument was gathered from women’s health organisations, community organisations, tertiary institutions and local governments funded under the Free from Violence funding streams.