ABSTRACT
Inquisitive professional managers will wish to know the answer even if they do not receive formal requests to undertake monitoring and evaluation of their activities. Greater understanding of monitoring and evaluation can be achieved by learning to distinguish between different concepts which are often used carelessly and cause confusion as a result. By and large, research methods, like measures, fall into the two categories of quantitative and qualitative, but the distinction is not clear cut, and the methods do not correspond neatly with types of measure. Teams sometimes make the mistake of choosing the methods of measurement before the measures. The measures are based on the existence of: early warning of families at risk, better access for people, a negotiated response to needs, local participation in defining services, locally managed resources, and co-ordinated local planning. Community social work practice is certainly no woollier than traditional work in proving its long-term benefits.
