Improvement Science in Evaluation : Methods and Uses

While improvement science has experienced a surge of interest over the past 30 years, applications of it are rare in the evaluation literature.

This issue promotes the cross-fertilization of ideas, techniques, and tools between evaluation and improvement science. There are at least four areas where this cross-fertilization is particularly relevant: learning from error, examining variation, appreciating context, and focusing on systems change. This volume considers:

• the conceptual similarities and distinctions between improvement science and evaluation;
• the intellectual foundations, methods, and tools that collectively comprise improvement science; and
• case chapters that offer an inspiring review of state-of-the-art improvement science applications.

Cutting across all of these applications is a shared grounding in systems thinking, a determination to capture and better understand variation and contextual complexity, as well as a sustained commitment to generative learning about projects and programs―all issues of great concern to evaluators. The issue offers producers and users of evaluations the potential benefits of a closer engagement with improvement science.

This is the 153rd issue in the New Directions for Evaluation series from Jossey-Bass. It is an official publication ofthe American Evaluation Association.

Moira Inkelas is an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and assistant director of the Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities.

Sebastian Lemire is a doctoral candidate in the Social Research Methodology Division in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.