A Three-Way Approach to Evaluating Partnerships: Partnership Survey, Integration Measure and Social Network Analysis

Abstract

An increasing number of initiatives are delivered through cross-sectoral or cross-jurisdictional partnerships. Methods to evaluate partnerships have also proliferated, but tend to focus only on particular aspects of partnerships. None alone provide a comprehensive picture of how a partnership is working. Working on commissioned evaluations of partnership initiatives, we have faced the challenge of selecting appropriate methods to gather information on partnership processes—from program or community-level partnerships to partnerships across the highest levels of government. While many partnership evaluations rely on analysis of participants’ views on how effectively the partnership works, more powerful evaluation demands methods to collect systematic quantifiable data on the actual behaviour of the partnership and how it changes over time. We reviewed a number of quantitative methods for assessing partnership processes and outcomes. As a result, we have been adapting and trialling three data collection tools to assess different aspects of partnerships: 1 A partnership survey (adapted from the Nuffield Partnership Assessment Tool): to collect systematic feedback from participating stakeholders on key partnership dimensions. 2 An integration measure (based on the Human Services Integration Measure developed by Browne and colleagues in Canada): to assess the level of cooperation between participating partners. 3 Social network analysis (employing a sociocentric approach and analysing data using UCINET1): to collect information on interactions between individuals in the partnership. We have found that the complementarity of these methods provides a robust and more complete picture of the processes and outcomes of partnership initiatives and can be used in combination with qualitative methods to enhance the robustness of partnership assessments.