Step 5: Identify any gaps in knowledge

• Will you need to carry out any additional work to fill any gaps in your knowledge or your evaluative evidence? Double check that you don’t already have the evidence you need – for example, from a combination of course or project evaluations, case studies, work logs, video diaries, minutes of meetings, written reports etc. etc.
• Is it enough to answer the QI questions?  Is it good quality evidence? See Resource 11 for more detail about evidence. You may need more…
• If you do need more evidence, plan how to get this most efficiently and effectively. Self-evaluation isn’t intended to add greatly to your workload – asking those groups, individuals, partners, practitioners, with whom you already work, in ways that feel as natural and informal as possible, will elicit the most useful indications of how good the CLD provision is.  See resources below (Resource 3, 4,5,6) for some suggested methods for gathering additional evidence.
• One piece of good quality evidence is worth a whole file full of irrelevant evidence! There are hundreds of ways to gather evaluative evidence – some of the tools and resources available for use are linked for you here:

Resource 2 Most frequently used HGILDIOC QIs and their Challenge questions

Resource 3 Suggested steps for organisations self-evaluation group sessions

Resource 4Suggested layout for self-evaluation session flipchart

Resource 5 Suggestion for a ‘plain english’ flipchart layout for QI 2.1

Resource 6 Suggested layout for using SWOT for a self evaluation session

Move on to Step 6…