Motivating Home Energy Action
Australian Greenhouse Office, 2002
Fact sheet 3 - Monitoring and evaluating your initiative
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- Download Motivating Home Energy Action - Monitoring and evaluating your initiative - Fact sheet 3
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Monitoring and evaluating your home energy program from the outset can:
- make it more effective
- make it cheaper
- avoid mistakes and the cost of an unsuccessful program, and
- develop an ongoing knowledge base for future programs.
HOW DO I MEASURE THE IMPACT OF MY PROGRAM?
Step 1 - Identify key stakeholders. Your list may include:
- householders who participated in the program
- householders who did not participate in the program
- manufacturers
- sales people in the industry targetted
- service providers
- program staff, or
- program contractors.
Step 2 - Understand what information needs to be collected. Decide if qualitative or quantitative measures, or a combination of both, are more suited to your program.
Some programs can be quantitatively measured. Some possible quantitative measures are:
- rate of participation in the program
- increase in sales of a new technology
- net improvements in energy efficiency of buildings
- net energy savings for the program, and
- average net energy savings for the program.
(Beware: it is easy to over- or under-estimate the effects of an energy action program. It is also difficult to estimate greenhouse gas emissions savings. For more details on quantitative measures, click here.)
Not all program impacts can be measured with numbers. Qualitative measures of success may include:
- satisfaction with the program, and
- barriers to program participation.
Step 3 - Choose an appropriate strategy to gather your information. These may include:
- detailed interviews
- group discussion
- surveys
- controlled experiments, and
- computer models.
(Note: Program evaluation and social research is a complex field. It is recommend you undertake further research or seek professional advice. Motivating Home Energy Action has further guidelines on each of these options. Click here.)
Step 4 - Monitor the program as it is implemented. Measuring the daily operations and administration of the program can identify opportunities for improvement.
YOUR MONITORING AND EVALUATION CHECKLIST
- Choose your strategy
- Involve your stakeholders
- Decide what you want to know
- Decide how to find out what you want to know
- Decide what to do with the information
- Share the knowledge with others
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