Background: The Tobacco Control Evaluation Center (TCEC) is a statewide evaluation technical assistance center funded by the California Department of Public Health Tobacco Control Program TCEC serves over 100 county health agencies and community-based organizations that are working to reduce the prevalence and impact of tobacco use in California It’s goal is to build the evaluation capacity of client organizations through: –Individualized client-driven assistance (call us when the need strikes) –Development of how-to publications to guide evaluation practice –Periodic regional face-to-face trainings Problem Statement: The state budget crisis resulted in huge cuts to public health funding, affecting the monies available to county health programs A number of Tobacco Control projects report they can no longer afford to retain external evaluators Instead, evaluation responsibilities are being shifted to in-house staff with little expertise Additionally, staff positions have been cut, left unfilled, or subjected to furlough days This has left fewer hours and staff to accomplish the same amount of work Opting for Evaluation Expediency in an Age of Budgetary Cost Cutting Robin Kipke, Evaluation Associate at the UC Davis Center for Program Evaluation and Research Gathering Best Practices from the Field TCEC has begun to collect effective evaluation strategies directly from the projects doing the work Agencies with limited means or staff to collect large samples of public opinion data could try to add a few key questions to larger biennial surveys being carried out by other studies or departments (e.g., CA Health Interview Survey, CDC, etc.) To reach a larger sample, try asking other institutions to pass out your questionnaires along with their materials: –Back-to-school packets mailed to student households –Sunday church service programs –Homework from classroom teachers –Grocery store flyers –Movie theater tickets In rural areas where low population density makes obtaining an adequate sample difficult, conducting a series of focus groups with purposive sampling may be a better strategy Building Evaluation Capacity in Practice Content analysis of final evaluation reports and proposed evaluation plans indicates a large proportion of projects still need to improve their practice of evaluation To help projects improve their understanding of evaluation principles and methods, TCEC hosts monthly interactive webinars on practical topics Short presentations on data collection methods, webinars and how-to publications are archived on the TCEC website ( A quarterly evaluation newsletter covers needful issues related to the stages of project timelines California has been hit harder than most states with budget shortfalls. As a result, many social service programs that rely on state funding have seen their budgets stagnate or shrink. This has left many county health departments tobacco control programs with less money and fewer staff to do the same amount of work. Meeting the Need of Changing Realities As client needs shift towards more time- efficient evaluation activities, TCEC has begun to rethink how it provides technical assistance Needs assessment indicates that projects are most interested in obtaining data collection instruments in English and other languages While improving the evaluation practice of client agencies remains a priority, TCEC is finding ways to save agencies staff time and money by creating tools and templates which can easily be adapted for their immediate needs Improving Data Collection To facilitate higher quality data, TCEC has drafted model data collection instruments on the most prevalent policy objectives with specifications for their use The instruments have been created with lower literacy level and various ethnic target populations in mind Plans are being made to field test the instruments with specific English-speaking priority populations to assess their clarity Vetted instruments will be translated into Spanish, Vietnamese, Hmong, Russian and other languages as client need dictates TCEC also administers a coalition satisfaction survey service – collecting data via Survey Monkey and providing analysis to projects Clients can also request access to hundreds of instruments created and used by tobacco control projects in a TCEC repository The Tobacco Control Evaluation Center is part of the UC Davis Center for Program Evaluation and Research For more information, contact Robin Kipke at