The Public Health Pyramid
Pyramids tend to be easy to understand and work well to capture tiered concepts. For these reasons, pyramids have been used to depict the
provider organizations conduct a self-evaluation as an early step in the accreditation process. These accreditation-related evaluations apply predominantly to direct care providers rather than to specific programs.
Completely voluntary evaluations are initiated, planned, and completed by the project staff members in an effort to make improvements. However, given the relatively low reward from, and cost associated with, doing an evaluation when it is not required, these evaluations are likely to be small with low scientific rigor. Pro- grams that engage voluntarily in evaluations may have good intentions, but they often lack the skills and knowledge required to conduct an appropriate evaluation.
When Not to Evaluate Situations and circumstances that are not amenable to conducting an evaluation do exist, despite a request or the requirement for having an evaluation. Specifically, it is not advisable to attempt an evaluation under the following four circumstances: when there are no questions about the program, when the program has no clear direction, when stakeholders cannot agree on the program objectives, and when there is not enough money to conduct a sound evaluation.
