Program Evaluation: A Practical Guide for Social Work and the Helping Professions

How do you uncomplicate the subject of program evaluation for students without being too simplistic? David Royse focuses on what readers really need to understand in order to apply useful program evaluation techniques in their practice serving individual clients, couples, and families. Drawing on decades of teaching this subject, he skillfully takes an incremental approach to teaching so that students aren't overwhelmed by information that they won't necessarily use in professional settings. He develops readers' interest in each new chapter's topic by incorporating real-life scenarios, excerpts from articles on program evaluation, and his own personal experiences in assessing and evaluating programs.

Each chapter contains suggestions for additional reading and examples from current literature. These interesting-to-read segments not only show students that program evaluators and practitioners actually use these techniques, but they also gently expand readers' knowledge of the field. Helpful features such as review questions and skill assessments are found at the end of each chapter. This text is also unique in the amount of coverage it provides on cultural sensitivity-ways of understanding the concept and assessing its presence (or absence) among employees in agencies.

Highly accessible and practical in its approach, this book is designed for undergraduates or graduate students in social work, counseling, and health-related programs and available for adoption in-classroom, online, or hybrid courses.

David Royse is an Emeritus Professor in the College of Social Work at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Royse has an extensive publication record with his work appearing in Children and Youth Services Review, Child Abuse & Neglect, Social Work in Health Care, and Child Welfare, among others. He is the author of several research methodology books as well as Child Welfare and Child Protection with Austin Griffiths (Cognella).