Evidence shows that evaluation practice is limited to direct support within training: little action takes place with other organizational units. Evaluation must have a significant role in the overall human resource function of an organization and must be a part of the planning function. (JOW)

Describes how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to help evaluators convey complex information simply through a spatial representation. Demonstrates how GIS can be used to plot change over time, including impact and outcome data gathered by primary data collection. (SLD)

When training must be delivered quickly, needs assessment remains crucial despite time pressures. Quick ways to conduct needs assessment include interviews with key staff, analysis of information gathered for other purposes, and use of the World Wide Web. (SK)

Certain challenges are inherent in collecting data to evaluate nonformal education programs and settings. One challenge relates to the complexity of the educational system in which nonformal learning takes place. Separating the learning effects of a nonformal education program on participants from the effects of other essential elements of their…

This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…

The effects of data-gathering methods on pragmatic data have been well documented, yet an inquiry into the interactive effects of assessment tasks with pragmatic instruction has received scant attention. This study investigated the interaction between two assessment tasks (e-mail and phone) and two types of pragmatic instruction (explicit and…

The culture at the authors' institution raised barriers to changing from traditional assessment to portfolio assessment in the doctoral program. A Culture of Independence presented barriers of time and functional inadequacy. A Culture of Compliance raised trust, group process, and membership issues. These barriers were managed and overcome using…

Single-case design and progress monitoring methodologies are efficient and cost-effective strategies for increasing accountability for indirect service provision. Single-case design conceptualizes the treatment of an individual as an experimental process that can be monitored over time and evaluated for effectiveness. Increasingly in clinical,…

This article describes how job analysis, a method commonly used in personnel research and organizational psychology, provides a systematic method for documenting program staffing and service delivery that can improve evaluators' knowledge about program operations. Job analysis data can be used to increase evaluators' insight into how staffs…

The School Improvement Project (SIP) and Local School Development Project are two school-based constituency planning programs. The Documentation Unit is responsible for ongoing documentation and evaluation of them. The goals of the unit included holistic school assessment, development of school based needs assessment and evaluation activities, and…

The benefits accrued through the use of triangulation as both a design strategy and an analytic tool cannot be overstated. Triangulation allows for the clustering and organizing of disparate yet related data. Finding out what the data have in common and how the data are different allow the researcher to eliminate (or reduce) the number of…

This project, located in a large metropolitan school district, concerns the operation and evaluation of three Mathematics Demonstration Centers. In the first phase, directions are given about the necessary information to be gathered by the evaluating organization, (e.g. the school district administrative organization, size of school district,…

Evaluated methods for selecting respondents who would respond accurately to items on a job-analysis questionnaire. One method involved obtaining from employees measures that assessed background, performance, and organizational information. A second method involved collecting job-analysis data from all potential job-analysis respondents and…

This guide gives middle school teachers and principals the tools they need to get answers to their questions about program evaluation. It shows how to use the information to work more effectively and efficiently and explains how to use program evaluation techniques to make sure that the approaches selected really solve the problems of interest.…

Based on a decade of evaluation experience, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) has developed the Integrated Evaluation Methods (IEM) Package, a series of conceptual and methodological applications to enhance CSAT-funded evaluation activities. Products in the IEM Package are organized within an evaluation framework constructed on the…