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Community Engagement Institute

Center for Applied Research & Evaluation

The Center for Applied Research and Evaluation assists organizations and communities in developing clarity about the need for and effectiveness of their efforts or services. 

RESPONSIVE

We work closely with organizations to ensure our research and evaluation is responsive to their needs.

SUPPORTIVE

Our evaluations help you target your work, document the effects, and determine what changes to pursue.

COLLABORATIVE

We provide expertise, collaboration, user-friendly reports, actionable data and so much more.

What to Expect

COMMUNITY HEALTH ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING

CEI researchers and facilitators have experience to support your next community health assessment or community health planning.

Learn more

CONNECT WITH OUR TEAM

We are excited to partner with you and provide tools to help you reach your community and better accomplish your goals. Contact us directly with the email provided below!

CEIcontact@wichita.edu

Project Highlights & Resources

Riley County Community Needs Assessment
In an effort to gain insights from the community for the purposes of planning and community improvement, Wichita State University’s Center for Applied Research and Evaluation (CARE) was contracted by the Flint Hills Wellness Coalition in 2015 and 2020 to conduct a community-wide needs assessment for Riley County, which included the compilation of selected secondary data, administration of a community survey, community member interviews, and focus groups.
 

Riley County Community Needs Assessment Website

Kansas Children’s Cabinet and Trust Fund Evaluations
Early childhood provides a unique opportunity to provide powerful prevention and early intervention for school readiness with the potential for long term effects. The Kansas Children’s Cabinet and Trust Fund contracts with the Center for Applied Research and Evaluation to identify and implement common measurement to evaluate outcomes for early childhood programing across Kansas. Through the dedication and hard work of grantees across the state, consistent measures are collected for similar program types. The goal is to allow for continuous quality improvement for programs as well as a statewide evaluation of outcomes associated with early childhood programs.
 
Creating a Survey/Questionnaire
Although questionnaires/surveys are one of the most common methods of gathering information for evaluation purposes, it can be tricky to create a good one. Check out the resource below for tips to help increase the likelihood that your surveys measure what you intend, and in a consistent manner across all respondents.
 

Center for Applied Research & Evaluation

what to expect

We make research and evaluation work for you by assisting with logic model development, community needs assessments, program evaluations, surveys, focus groups and other types of data gathering, analysis, and reporting.

  • Expertise: Our team of PhD, Masters, and Bachelors-level researchers and evaluators have over 70 years of experience.

  • Collaboration: We listen to your unique needs and partner with you to use our know-how to customize an approach that perfectly accommodates them.

  • Innovation and Best Practices: We stay on top of the new as well as tried and true approaches in research and evaluation to ensure the work we do for you is accurate, precise, and high quality.

  • Ethics and Professionalism: The only thing we’re nerdier about than research is maintaining a trustworthy process that honors the rights, dignity and privacy of all involved.

  • User-Friendly Reports: The results are only useful if they’re in a format you can use, which is why we are committed to creating reports you can use even if you’re no fan of data.

  • Actionable Data: When all is said and done, we’ll make sure you know the next steps and how you can make the most of the research!