Scaling Checklists: Assessing Your Level of Evidence and Readiness (SCALER)

This guide describes a framework that identifies how organizations can improve both their readiness to scale an intervention and the intervention’s readiness to be scaled. This helps to position the intervention services to improve outcomes for a larger number of participants. Each checklist in the SCALER provides summary scores to reflect how ready an intervention and organization might be for scaling.

Goals:
This guide was designed to help organizations scale their interventions successfully. The SCALER framework includes checklists that organizations can use to determine if they have: 

1. Evidence of their intervention’s effectiveness that meets industry standards for rigorous evaluation research 
2. The procedures and processes in place that will enable them to successfully scale an intervention

Checklists:
The eight checklists included in this report include:

• Checklist 1. Identifying an effective intervention
• Checklist 2. Building evidence of effectiveness
• Checklist 3. Specifying the intervention
• Checklist 4. Defining the target population
• Checklist 5. Establishing implementation supports
• Checklist 6. Having an enabling context
• Checklist 7. Establishing an implementation infrastructure
• Checklist 8. Summary of scaling readiness

Considerations:
When reading this guide, consider that:

• The SCALER framework is based on successful scaling principles that have emerged from implementation science research.
• The checklists in this guide were developed from rubrics used to assess AmeriCorps grantees’ evidence of effectiveness for funded interventions and readiness to scale.
• The discussion and checklists in this guide were developed for AmeriCorps grantees to use when scaling their funded interventions, though they may also be useful to a broader audience.

For more information, download the checklists.

Scaling Evidence-Based Models (SEBM) Project

 The Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) initiated the Scaling Evidence-Based Models project to support the scaling of effective interventions. This guide is part of ORE’s Scaling Evidence-Based Models project, which includes additional resources that contribute to the study and application of scaling effective interventions. Below are additional scaling resources:

• Baseline Equivalence: What it is and Why it is Needed: This guide is designed to help practitioners and researchers work together to design an impact study with baseline equivalence and in turn learning how to determine if an impact study is likely to produce meaningful results.

• What Makes for a Well-Designed, Well-Implemented Impact Study: This guide is intended to help practitioners ensure that their evaluators produce high-quality impact studies.

• How to Fully Describe an Intervention: This guide is intended to help practitioners to thoroughly describe their intervention and communicate the following to potential funders or stakeholders.

• Making the Most of Data: This guide will help practitioners maximize the use of their intervention data to help their organizations improve program implementation and provide evidence to funders about effectiveness.

• How to Structure Implementation Supports: This guide will help practitioners develop formal strategies (also known as implementation supports) to help consistently deliver an intervention as it was designed, which is especially helpful for organizations scaling an intervention and assessing implementation fidelity.

• Build Organizational Capacity to Implement an Intervention: This guide will help practitioners prepare to implement their desired intervention through building organizational capacity, which involves establishing the organizational structure, workforce, resources, processes, and culture to enable success.

• Scaling the Birth and Beyond (B&B) Intervention: Insights from the Experiences of the Child Abuse Prevention Council (CAPC): This case study describes the scaling of Birth and Beyond (B&B), a parenting education and support intervention designed to reduce child maltreatment, by the Child Abuse Prevention Council of Sacramento (CAPC) and its partners.

• Scaling the Reading Corps Intervention: Insights from the Experiences of the United Way of Iowa: This case study describes the scaling of Reading Corps, a literacy intervention designed to improve reading proficiency by United Ways of Iowa (UWI) and its partners.

• Scaling the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) Intervention: Insights from the Experiences of Parent Possible: This case study describes the scaling of Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY), a home-visiting intervention that seeks to help parents improve their young children’s development, by Parent Possible and its partners.

• Scaling Evidence-Based Interventions: Insights from the Experiences of Three Grantees: AmeriCorps and Mathematica conducted the Scaling Evidence-Based Models (SEBM) project to deepen the agency’s understanding of the most effective program innovations and its knowledge base on scaling them. To learn more, Mathematica conducted a process study of three AmeriCorps-funded grantees and their partners using a scaling framework as a guide.

• Planned Scaling Activities of AmeriCorps-Funded Organizations: This report is designed to generate both practical knowledge about how AmeriCorps and other funders can successfully scale effective interventions.

• Evidence of Effectiveness in AmeriCorps-Funded Organizations: This report is designed to help inform the agency’s interest in identifying the intervention components that are critical for an intervention’s effectiveness.

• Scaling an Intervention: Recommendations and Resources: The guide provides five key recommendations that will help funders like AmeriCorps, other government agencies, and philanthropic organizations identify which funded interventions are effective, enhance their knowledge base on scaling them, and pursue scaling.