Program Evaluation: Methods and Case Studies (6th Edition) - Hardcover

Posavac, Emil J.; Carey, Raymond G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0130409669 ISBN 13: 9780130409669

Publisher: Taylor & Francis, 2002

Synopsis

Comprehensive yet accessible, this book provides a practical introduction to the skills, attitudes, and methods required to assess the worth and value of human services offered in public and private organizations in a wide range of fields. Readers are introduced to the need for such activities, the methods for carrying out evaluations, and the essential steps in organizing findings into reports. The book focuses on smaller projects carried out by an internal evaluator (i.e., on the work of people who are closely associated with the service to be evaluated), and is designed to help program planners, developers, and evaluators to work with program staff members who might be threatened by program evaluation. Features case studies and short profiles of individual program evaluators engaged in conducting evaluations in private service agencies, foundations, universities, and federal, state, and local governments. Program Evaluation: An Overview. Planning an Evaluation. Selecting Criteria and Setting Standards. Developing Measures. Ethics in Program Evaluation. The Assessment of Need. Monitoring the Operation of Programs. Single Group, Nonexperimental Outcome Evaluations. Quasi-Experimental Approaches to Outcome Evaluation. Using Experiments to Evaluate Programs. Analysis of Costs and Outcomes. Qualitative Evaluation Methods. Evaluation Reports: Interpreting and Communicating Findings. How to Encourage Utilization. For Program Evaluators, Program Planners, Program Administrators, Public Administrators in all types of human services--Criminal Justice, Corrections, Public Health, Public Administration, Community Nursing, Educational Administration, Substance Abuse Program Administration, Social Work, etc.

About this title

From the Publisher

This volume provides a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the skills, attitudes and methods required to evaluate programs offered in public and private organizations. The authors stress the development of a program-improvement focus that begins with program conceptualization through implementation and analysis of outcomes and costs. They also provide detailed descriptions of methods for improving program evaluation reports and encouraging utilization.

From the Back Cover

Posavac and Carey provide a comprehensive, but accessible, introduction to the field of program evaluation featuring methods needed to evaluate programs offered in public and private mental health, educational, health care, criminal justice, and human resource organizations. By adopting a flexible philosophy of evaluation, the authors demonstrate how program evaluation can be applied to answer a wide variety of questions in many different settings. The sixth edition includes case studies of completed program evaluations and sketches of the careers of program evaluators to help readers develop an appreciation of the applicability of evaluation methods.

The authors stress the importance of working with representatives of all groups affected by a program, whether they be program staff or managers, recipients. or people providing financial or moral support. The Improvement-Focused Model of Evaluation can be used to include many people in the evaluation process. The teat shows that the application of program evaluation serves to contribute to making society more effective, just, and healthy.

Sixth Edition Highlights

• Strong emphasis on keeping evaluations focused on contributing to program improvement
• Greater emphasis on the value of clarifying the conceptual foundation of programs to be evaluated
• Additional illustrations of statistical techniques useful in program evaluation
• Updated citations and suggestions for further study
• Guidance for obtaining information from sources available on the Internet

Edition details

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0130409669
• ISBN 13: 9780130409669
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 6
• Number of pages: 344