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Evaluation and Needs Assessment Resources

Evaluation Resources

Dementia Friendly Communities pledge to conduct evaluation when they apply for Dementia Friendly America recognition, and DFA has collaborated with evaluation experts to create a terrific evaluation guide focused on the work and goals of DFCs. If DFC Action Teams and coordinators are new to evaluation, they will find the following resources offer a gentle onramp to the subject of evaluation.

  • Evaluation for Leaders: Unit 1 provides a high-level overview of what evaluation is and its importance to social change efforts. Feel free to take all the online units designed for community leaders who need to know about evaluation, but do not want to become a technical expert. This free online course, developed by Lovato and Hutchinson and hosted by the University of British Columbia, provides a summary and quiz at the end of each unit. https://evaluationforleaders.org/

  • Evalu-WHAT? A Quick Introduction to Evaluation: This 8-minute video was developed with public funding from the National Science Foundation to introduce leaders to evaluation. This might be a useful video to share with Action Teams before starting to evaluate a DFC project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQxWJJ9Wpmg

Needs Assessment Resources 

In Phase 2 and Phase 3 of the Dementia Friendly America community change process involves community needs assessment, the collection and analysis of data collected from community leaders and other sources about the community’s strengths and gaps concerning dementia services, resources and environment. The DFA Community Toolkit provides excellent guidance on how to carry out a dementia friendly community assessment.  The resources we provide supplement this important area of DFC work. 

  • Community Needs Assessment 101: This YouTube video produced by The Center for Victims Services Research provides a 4-minute overview of what a community needs assessment is and its benefit to groups trying to solve complex social issues.
  • Community Needs Assessment: The Resources and Examples Your Organization Needs: This blog by Addison Waters was published in November 2020 and resource links have been updated as recently as December 2023. While we suggest you use the Community Toolkit to support your community needs assessment, the overview and some of the resources may be helpful to you. 

Interview Resource  

The Community Toolkit is not easily constructed with free online software. We recommend that the DFA sector questions in the Community Toolkit are administered as a “key informant interview.”

To learn more, click the "Key Informant Interview" button for a resource produced by UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research.

The Basic Knowledge about Alzheimer’s Disease (BKAD) Survey
(Wiese et al., 2020) 

The Bronstein Center for Healthy Aging and Wellness has utilized the BKAD survey to supplement the DFA Community Toolkit in our work with DFC partners, because the DFA Community Toolkit does not provide a validated measure of dementia knowledge. The BKAD has been validated with rural communities as a dementia knowledge measure and can be used to identify the specific topics and larger areas of awareness and knowledge that a community needs.  

Download and print the survey to administer the BKAD in paper format. If you administer paper copies of the survey, you will have to enter the results. See the instructional guide on how to create an online formatted survey and save yourself data entry time. If you build an online formatted survey, be sure to cut and paste from this document to avoid typographical errors. 

How to Create a Google Account and Access Google Forms 

Use this handout if you don’t have a gmail account or would like to associate a different email with the DFC survey. The handout also shows you where Google Forms lives in a Google account. 

Handout: Create a Google Account

Download the BKAD Survey

BKAD Online Survey

BKAD Answer Key: Reference this document to identify items that participants need more information about to answer correctly. For online formatted surveys, you can copy and paste the answers to automatically show participants the correct answers at the end of the survey.  

BKAD Answer Key