What are outcomes?

If you are successful in providing your services, what changes will your participants experience? Generally, outcomes describe who, will do, what as a result of your services. Outcomes can be short-term, usually changes in attitude, beliefs and knowledge; intermediate, which can be developing and practicing new skills; or long term, including permanent changes at an individual level or changes that create an impact on larger social structures.

What are some examples of outcomes?

Outcomes can look many different ways, but some examples of outcome statements are:

• Participants demonstrate knowledge of how to create a child-safe home. (Short-term, or learning outcome)
• Participants make their home child-safe. (Intermediate or practice outcome)
• Participants maintain a child-safe home. (long term, permanent change)
• Children have fewer hospitalizations due to preventable household accidents. (long term, impact on a larger social structure)

Where can I download a list of outcomes that my program might be able to adapt?

FRIENDS has created a menu of outcomes and indicators that are targeted by prevention programs. You can view the menus by clicking here. You can also view them as a component of the Logic Model Builder described previously. If you choose to build a logic model using this system, you will be able to search the outcomes and indicators by key-words and construct.

Please note: The tool-kit menu of outcomes and indicators has extensive lists of outcomes. There should be some that are appropriate for your program, but you will want to word-smith and make other edits so that they are accurate reflections of what your services target. In other words, please do not “pick and click” and stop there.

Where can I find more information on outcomes?

FRIENDS has developed a resource on outcomes, to view this information, click here.

Alternative terms: goals, objectives

Click here to go to the Logic Model Builder