Poetic representation in program evaluation: an integrated model

An evaluation was conducted of a community trauma program based in a local church to guide improvement, expansion, and replication efforts. While conducting interviews an unexpected pattern of language emerged, and in the creation of the evaluation report a poetic representation was included as an offering to the interviewees who had shared their time, their stories, and their words. This article explores poetic representation as an option for sharing evaluation data, presents a model for evaluating poetic representation, and encourages evaluators to explore creative mechanisms for sharing with research and evaluation participants.