Program Evaluation: Methods and Case Studies

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.

Emil J. Posavac (Ph.D., University of Illinois, Champaign) is professor of Psychology at Loyola University of Chicago where he has served as director of the Applied Social Psychology Program and chairman of the Psychology Department. He has consulted with a number of public and private organizations. He has published sixty papers and chapters, edited or co-edited six volumes on program evaluation and applied social psychology, and written numerous evaluation reports for health care and educational institutions. He is currently completing a textbook (with Eugene B. Zechmeister) on statistical analysis based on emerging orientations that emphasize a more complete understanding and presentation of data. He is a member of the American Psychological Society, the Society for the Advancement of Social Psychology, and the American Evaluation Association, among other groups. In 1990, he was awarded the Myrdal Award by the American Evaluation Association for his contributions to the advancement of program evaluation practice.

Raymond G. Carey (Ph.D., Loyola University of Chicago) is principal of R. G. Carey Associates. He was the vice president of Parkside Associates, Inc., a member of the Lutheran General Health Care System (now Advocate Health Care). Widely published in the fields of health services and quality assurance, Dr. Carey has consulted on employee attitudes and quality assurance to hospitals throughout the U.S. In addition, he was a member of the Technical Advisory Panel of the Post-Acute Care Study for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He teaches quality improvement procedures for hospital managers seeking to improve the quality of their health services. Carey is the author of Managing to Win: Evaluating the Use of Human Resources in Health Care Organizations and Measuring Quality Improvement in Healthcare: A Guide to Statistical Process Control Applications (with Robert C. Lloyd).