Human Resources Program-Evaluation Handbook

Technological advances and rapid changes in workforce demographics pose extensive challenges to human resources program evaluators. But little has been done to document successful human resources program assessment and implementation strategies.

The Human Resources Program-Evaluation Handbook is the first book to present state-of-the-art procedures for evaluating and improving human resources programs. Editors Jack E. Edwards, John C. Scott, and Nambury S. Raju provide a user-friendly yet scientifically rigorous "how to" guide to organizational program-evaluation. Integrating perspectives from a variety of human resources and organizational behavior programs, a wide array of contributing professors, consultants, and governmental personnel successfully link scientific information to practical application.

Offering authoritative guidance to both novice and experienced program evaluators, this unique guidebook includes

• New perspectives on organizational program-evaluation
• Methods to assess the efficiency of human resources programs
• Identification of potential pitfalls
• Real-life examples
• Additional references for program-evaluation best practices

The Human Resources Program-Evaluation Handbook provide program-evaluation teams with content-specific guidance. Supplying useful and accurate evaluation techniques, the editors present a manual for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of most major types of human resources programs.

Designed for academics and graduate students in industrial-organizational psychology, human resources management, and business, the handbook is also an essential resource for human resources professionals, consultants, and policy makers.

In addition to editing this book, Jack Edwards has published two survey books cited in the Recommended Readings section of this chapter. He is currently an Assistant Director in the Office of Applied Research and Methods at the U.S. General Accounting Office, Washington, DC. His prior positions include Chief of the Personnel Survey Branch at the Defense Manpower Data Center and tenured Associate Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. (The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. General Accounting Office.)

I have been at Plymouth University since 2008, having previously been Professor of Sociology at Essex University since 1994. Before that, I was Professor and Head of Department at the University of Leicester and I have previously taught at the University of Strathclyde. Until 2005 I was an Adjunct Professor in the Sosiologisk Institutt at the University of Bergen. I am Editor of the European Societies, the journal of the European Sociological Association. I have been an active member of the British Sociological Association since 1970 and have been Newsletter editor, Secretary, Treasurer, Chairperson, and President. I am currently an Honorary Vice-President. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), and an academician of the Academy of Learned Society in the Social Sciences (AcSS).

Dr. Raju, 68, of Burr Ridge, a psychometrician and professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, died of a heart attack during a stress test Thursday, Oct. 27, in Rush University Medical Center. Nambury S. Raju was a brilliant man, family and friends said. With a slew of degrees, his name attached to hundreds of publications and a handful of honorary titles, Dr. Raju didn′t stray far from the office or the halls of academia. He taught, he learned and he taught some more, his family said. He liked it that way. "He was a lifelong learner," said his wife, Marijke. "He was known for his work. That′s what he wanted." Dr. Raju′s field of study--psychometric research and test development--is complex, his family said. But to Dr. Raju, psychometrics--a combination of psychology, statistics and mathematics--was his specialty and trademark.