In planning for outcome evaluations of model or demonstration projects, applicants should adhere to the following guidelines:

1. Please have your evaluation consultant list specific measurable outcomes from your planned activities that you will test for with your evaluation. You may wish to phrase these as research questions or hypotheses.
2. Discuss the approach you will use to test whether your project is achieving these outcomes (your research design). Will you be able to use a randomized experiment (where you randomly assign participants to either your program (i.e. "treatment group") or to a no-treatment (i.e. "control") group? Or will you compare outcomes for your participants with those of some comparison group of similar individuals who do not participate?
3. Describe how you will find and enroll people in your program and comparison group (your sampling plan). List the criteria for who can/can not participate and the size of each group. If participants are not randomly placed in study groups, describe how the people in your comparison group are likely to be similar to and different from those you will serve with your project.
4. Discuss the information (i.e. data) you will gather and what form it will take (your measures).
   - List all outcomes you want to test for (dependent variables), and the indicators (measures) you will use to represent each. For example, improved health status can be defined as fewer hospitalizations, or as a lower rate of nursing home placement, or as higher functional status scores.
   - You may also want to collect information about those characteristics of participants that could shape how well your program works (intervening variables), listing the indicators you will use to measure these (e.g. gender, age, income, functional status, disease status, residential status). These data can help you if your findings suggest that your program wasn't as successful as you would have liked, because they allow you to test if the project worked for some participants and not for others.
5. Describe how you will collect your information (your data collection plan). Who will collect each type of data, at what points in time, and how (e.g. telephone or personal interviews, review of records, mailed survey, ratings by a nurse or social worker, etc.)?
6. Discuss how you will analyze your findings (your data analysis plan). Applicants are encouraged to think through different patterns of possible results and the conclusions they would draw from each. Also, they are encouraged to contact a local college or university to identify a statistical consultant who can conduct statistical testing to determine if results are meaningful, and who can help explain for purposes of a proposal what statistics would be used and why each is chosen. If a consultant is to be used, please name this individual and include his or her resume.
7. Discuss how you will address human subjects concerns such as confidentiality, informed consent, and risk.
8. Include an overall budget, and then separate out the portion of this budget that represents costs for evaluation, including data collection (e.g. personnel, copying, transportation, phone, postage, etc.); data management (checking for accuracy and entering data); and data analysis (software purchases, analysis time, consultant fees).

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