Reviews available published rural program evaluation efforts, documents reasons rural community mental health centers have offered for not implementing systematic program evaluation activities, and offers constructive suggestions for overcoming barriers to evaluation. Introduces standard program evaluation strategies. Discusses techniques and aids…

Educators use informal theories and assumptions to guide their actions, yet often fail to evaluate these beliefs. This digest examines the nature and purpose of educational-indicator systems and discusses the design of report cards by which schools can inform the public of their performance. An indicator is any statistic that casts light on the…

Educators use informal theories and assumptions to guide their actions, yet often fail to evaluate these beliefs. This ERIC Digest in Spanish examines the nature and purpose of educational-indicator systems and discusses the design of report cards by which schools can inform the public of their performance. An indicator is any statistic that casts…

The "CSE Program Evaluation Kit" is a series of nine books intended to assist people conducting program evaluations. This volume, the second in the kit, provides advice about planning an evaluation--from deciding on the major questions the evaluation is intended to address, through the general approach--and identifying the principal…

Analyzes two methods of testing group differences of a latent variable: group code analysis and structured means analysis. Describes these methods in terms of conceptual representation, unique underlying assumptions, and relative merits and limitations; points toward methodological extensions beyond this two-sample case. (RJM)

Reports on the aggregate analysis of scores generated by a standardized instrument, the Teaching Evaluation Form (TEF; Hudson, 1982), at the College of Social Work, University of South Carolina. Data included more than 11,000 completions of the instrument in 508 class sections offered during a 4-year period. Analysis revealed a severely negatively…

Discusses the use of information retrieval techniques for the automatic authoring of hypertext. Presents a typology of hypertext links, describes examples of automatic construction of hypertext, and considers evaluation problems. (LRW)

Describes the challenges faced by researchers in evaluating a neighborhood revitalization project. Places the challenges in the context of three of the Program Evaluation Standards of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation: Values Identification, Fiscal Responsibility, and Analysis of Quantitative Information. (SLD)

Analyzed the ranking of Canadian universities by "Maclean's" magazine. Found that while the data and general criteria appear conceptually reasonable, their inconsistencies, together with associated problems in the interpretation of rank data, show that they cannot be logically or empirically useful to students in the matter of university…

Conditions necessary and sufficient for the determination of LISREL model solutions are identified. The reasons for indeterminacy of LISREL solutions are discussed, and an index of determinacy is presented and related to the covariance matrix of latent variables. (SLD)

Discusses strategies for conducting research on detection and treatment of suicidal ideation and behavior in primary health care settings. Examines problems and results from ongoing study of adolescent health care to focus discussion. Illustrates how, depending on questions asked and individual's gender, number of youths considered at risk for…

Examines whether certain student essays produce widely diverging holistic assessments from trained readers, using an essay from the 1986 Early English Composition and Assessment Program (from Miami University's Ohio Writing Project) and evaluating rater response with a questionnaire. Finds that the same paper evoked very different scores and rater…

Different dimensions of evaluation utilization and evaluator strategies for stimulating use are discussed, in terms of designing a formal evaluation utilization system. While the need exists to improve the design process, there is no simple formula. Evaluators should see part of their function as creating a repository of knowledge. (SLD)

Drawing from personal experiences, writings, observations, evaluation training activities, and professional consultations, this article identifies 50 propositions inherent in personnel evaluation. Propositons fall into three categories: professional premises, contextual realities, and constraints. (MLH)

Develops random-effects probit model for case in which outcome of interest is series of correlated binary responses, obtained as product of longitudinal response process where individual is repeatedly classified on binary outcome variable or in multilevel or clustered problems in which individuals within groups are considered to share…