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Independent mixed-methods evaluation for grant-funded programs and for businesses
Plotline Evaluation: where your data becomes your story.
We collect the data and tell the story it holds: the numbers and the voices together, from the logic model to the final report. Led by John K. Trainor, PhD, and Scott West, MEd, BSCS. We are a veteran-owned practice, working remotely with clients across the United States and internationally.
We have worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Movember, among many others.
Who we work with
Grant applicants
Your application needs an evaluation plan and a named evaluator. We write the evaluation plan, logic model, measures and budget at no charge, and serve as your external evaluator if the grant is funded.
Funded programs
External evaluation for the life of the grant: instruments, data collection, data management, analysis, and annual and final reporting in the formats your funder and your board need.
Organizations with one defined need
A needs assessment, a survey, focus groups, interviews, a dashboard, a report due next month. Defined deliverables, a written quote, a firm date.
Businesses
The same discipline pointed at a company. We evaluate operations, financial performance, and processes and procedures, and tell you plainly what to change first.
What we do
Evaluation of every kind: process, outcome and impact, formative and summative. Four stages, and we are strong in each.
Plan
- Logic models
- Evaluation plans
- Needs assessments
Collect
- Surveys of all kinds
- Standardized instruments and custom-built tools
- Focus groups
- Interviews
- Observations
Analyze
- Qualitative analysis
- Quantitative analysis
- Mixed-methods integration: each read against the other
- Data management, so the numbers can be trusted
Report
- Expert data visualization
- Interactive dashboards
- Final reporting in multiple formats
Mixed methods, by design
The numbers show what changed and by how much. Interviews, focus groups and observations show why, for whom, and what it was like. Either one alone leaves a funder, a board or a program director with half an answer.
We design both into the evaluation from the start. The survey tells us whom to interview. The interviews tell us what the survey missed. Each is read against the other, and the report tells one story with the evidence behind it.
Some mandates require both kinds of evidence in so many words, the community action needs assessment among them. It is the heart of our practice.
Fields we know
Methods travel. Context does not. These are the fields where we have done the most work, many of them with people who have every reason to be careful about whom they talk to.
- Health care
- Suicide prevention
- Post-traumatic stress and depression
- Veteran support services
- First responders
- Domestic violence
- Human trafficking
- Missing and murdered Indigenous women
- Child support services
- Pregnancy and postpartum services
- Recidivism and other prison-related support services
And many others. If your field is not listed, ask.
Senior attention, modern tooling
Every engagement is led by a principal: John K. Trainor, PhD, or Scott West, MEd, BSCS. There is no hand-off to a junior analyst after the contract is signed.
Modern analytic tooling, including AI-assisted analysis under human review, shortens the distance between raw data and a finding you can act on. Survey results in days rather than weeks. Qualitative themes checked line by line against the transcripts. More of your evaluation budget spent on insight and less on processing.
Your data stays under your rules. AI-assisted methods are used only with your approval and within your data-protection requirements.
Where evaluation is required or scored
- National Science Foundation technical-education (ATE) proposals must request funds for an evaluator independent of the project (EvaluATE).
- AmeriCorps State and National grantees receiving $500,000 or more a year must arrange an external evaluation (45 CFR 2522.710).
- Federal health and human services announcements routinely score the evaluation or performance-assessment plan and set aside part of the award for it.
- Hospitals, Head Start programs and community action agencies must carry out needs assessments on a fixed cycle.
We have worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Movember, among many others.
Who does the work
A medical anthropologist and a data scientist. One of us is trained to understand people in their own setting and their own words. The other is trained to find what the numbers hold. Most evaluation questions need both, and most evaluators are strong in only one. That pairing is why mixed methods is our default and not an add-on.
John K. Trainor, PhD
Senior Evaluator and Medical Anthropologist
PhD in anthropology. Former evaluator at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Scott West, MEd, BSCS
Qualitative Evaluator, Data Scientist and AI Engineer
Marine Corps veteran. Has worked with veterans for two decades.
Request a proposal
Tell us about the program or the business, the question you need answered and your deadline. You will hear back within one business day.
Every inquiry is confidential. We never sell or share your information. Privacy policy.