The Observatory's challenge to help social entities to make improvements in order to achieve the goals they pursue has prompted the opportunity to produce a "Guide to the Evaluation of Social Policies". The aim of this Guide is to generate knowledge on this subject and, fundamentally, to promote its use and usefulness in social organisations. Managers and social agents will find in this guide the basic elements to approach a process of evaluation of their Plans, Programmes or Services.
We aim to establish a common methodological framework to guide the tasks to be carried out, and therefore provide key concepts, references and techniques that facilitate learning to evaluate. It is our wish to contribute to the creation and dissemination of an evaluation culture, understanding evaluation as an instrument for improving the planning of the interventions that social entities implement, but also as a tool that makes it possible to provide them with greater rationality, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. In short, it is a Guide that aims to encourage social entities to implement evaluations and, on the other hand, to contribute to the training of people and work teams who wish to introduce themselves in this field.