Qualitative Evaluation Methods for Grant-Funded Programs

The Role of Qualitative Evaluation in Grant-Funded Programs

Numbers reveal what happened. Qualitative evaluation reveals why it happened and how participants experienced it. While quantitative methods measure the magnitude of program outcomes, qualitative methods capture the context, meaning, and lived experience behind those numbers. Funders increasingly recognize that both forms of evidence are essential to understanding whether a program truly works.

Qualitative evaluation is particularly valuable when you need to understand how a program was implemented across different settings, why certain participants responded differently than others, or what unintended consequences emerged during delivery. This guide covers the primary qualitative methods used in grant evaluation and provides practical guidance for incorporating them into your proposals.

Core Qualitative Data Collection Methods

Semi-Structured Interviews

Semi-structured interviews combine a predetermined set of open-ended questions with the flexibility to probe deeper based on participant responses. They are ideal for gathering detailed perspectives from program staff, participants, or stakeholders about their experiences with the intervention. In a grant proposal, describe your interview protocol including the number of interviews planned, participant selection criteria, interview duration, and how you will ensure representation across relevant subgroups.

Focus Groups

Focus groups bring together six to ten participants for a facilitated discussion about shared experiences. They are especially effective for exploring group dynamics, surfacing areas of consensus or disagreement, and generating insights that emerge from interactive dialogue rather than individual reflection. When proposing focus groups, specify the number of sessions, group composition strategy, moderator qualifications, and whether you will use a structured or semi-structured discussion guide.

Case Studies

Case studies provide an in-depth examination of a single unit of analysis, whether that is one participant, one program site, or one community. They draw on multiple data sources including interviews, observations, documents, and artifacts to construct a comprehensive narrative. Case studies are powerful tools for demonstrating program impact in complex, real-world settings where controlled designs are not feasible.

Participant Observation

Direct observation of program activities generates data about implementation fidelity, participant engagement, and contextual factors that surveys cannot capture. Observation protocols should specify what behaviors or interactions will be documented, the observation schedule, and how observer bias will be managed through training and inter-rater reliability checks.

Qualitative Analysis Approaches

Collecting qualitative data is only half the task. Your proposal must also describe how you will analyze it systematically. Common approaches include:

• Thematic analysis: Identifying recurring patterns or themes across the dataset through iterative coding. This is the most widely used approach in program evaluation and is accessible to evaluators at all experience levels.
• Grounded theory: Developing theoretical explanations from the data rather than testing pre-existing hypotheses. Useful when exploring new or poorly understood phenomena.
• Content analysis: Systematically categorizing textual data into predefined or emergent categories and quantifying the frequency of each category.
• Narrative analysis: Examining the stories participants tell about their experiences to understand how they construct meaning around the program.

Regardless of the approach you select, describe your coding process, whether you will use deductive codes derived from your logic model and theory of change or inductive codes that emerge from the data, and how you will establish trustworthiness through techniques like member checking, triangulation, and audit trails.

Ensuring Rigor and Credibility

Grant reviewers evaluating qualitative components look for evidence of methodological rigor. The qualitative equivalent of reliability and validity is trustworthiness, which encompasses four criteria:

• Credibility: Are the findings believable from the perspective of participants? Strategies include prolonged engagement, triangulation, and member checking.
• Transferability: Can the findings apply to other contexts? Provide thick description so readers can judge applicability to their own settings.
• Dependability: Would the findings be consistent if the study were repeated? Maintain an audit trail documenting all methodological decisions.
• Confirmability: Are the findings shaped by participants rather than researcher bias? Use reflexivity practices and peer debriefing.

Connecting Qualitative Findings to Your Need Statement

Qualitative data also plays a critical role in building your problem statement. Community voices, stakeholder perspectives, and narrative accounts of the problem bring urgency and humanity to what might otherwise be abstract statistics. When you define the problem and need statement for your proposal, consider integrating qualitative evidence from preliminary interviews or community listening sessions alongside your quantitative data.

Learn more about grant writing strategies at Subthesis.

Strengthen Your Evaluation Toolkit

Qualitative evaluation is a skill that distinguishes strong proposals from average ones. Funders want to see that you understand not just whether your program works, but how and why it works. To develop comprehensive evaluation skills alongside every other element of competitive grant writing, enroll in The Complete Grant Architect course and learn to design evaluation plans that capture the full story of your program's impact.