Rand Program Evaluation Toolkit for Countering Violent Extremism

"Violent extremism poses a threat both within the United States and internationally. Countering violent extremism (CVE) requires addressing the conditions and reducing the underlying factors that give rise to radicalization and recruitment. Community-based CVE programs may engage in a variety of activities and target different populations, making it challenging to evaluate their effectiveness. Many of these programs also operate with limited resources and lack evaluation expertise. The RAND Program Evaluation Toolkit for Countering Violent Extremism was designed to help program staff overcome these common challenges to evaluating and planning improvements to their programs. It begins by walking users through the process of identifying core program components and developing a program logic model to show connections between resources, activities, outcomes, evaluation measures, and the need the program addresses in its community. It then helps users design an evaluation that is appropriate for their program type and available resources and expertise, supports the selection of evaluation measures, and offers basic guidance on how to analyze and use evaluation data to inform program improvement. Through checklists, worksheets, and templates, the toolkit takes users step by step through the process of determining whether their programs produce beneficial effects, ultimately informing the responsible allocation of scarce resources. The toolkit's design and content are the result of a rigorous, systematic review of the program evaluation literature to identify evaluation approaches, measures, and tools used elsewhere and will be particularly useful to managers and directors of community-based CVE programs and program funders."--Publisher's description.