Scottish Rural Communities Policy Review: Reviewing approaches and tools for evaluating rural community development interventions

Background and context

In 2024-5, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) reviewed evidence on government-led rural interventions including previous evaluations of Scottish Rural Action, Scottish Rural Network and Community Led Local Development. It found that at local level, clear objectives need to be defined with robust but proportionate administrative processes and good data collection and monitoring procedures to ensure effective evaluation takes place; and that local volunteers are critical to local community development activities.^[3] A related report on rural evidence, indicators and evaluation to inform the development of Scotland’s Rural Delivery Plan found that local level data is often limited or unavailable at small enough scale and in joined up ways to highlight connected rural challenges and opportunities.^[4]

The 2024 SRUC review recommended that the large-scale evaluation of rural communities’ policy should ‘review relevant evaluation frameworks and impact tools and to what extent they can be applied in a rural context. Use of Social Return on Investment and the Social Value Engine tools could be evaluated for example, alongside widely used evaluation frameworks such as the OECD’s evaluation criteria.’ This concept note develops SRUC’s recommendation.