Program Evaluation Standards : A Guide for Evaluators and Evaluation Users

Donald B. Yarbrough, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for Evaluation and Assessment and Professor of Psychological and Quantitative Foundations at the University of Iowa. He is the current chair of the JCSEE and has been a member since 1996, sponsored until 2008 by the National Council on Measurement in Education. He served as a writer for the Personnel Evaluation Standards and the Student Evaluation Standards and has helped organize and conduct numerous evaluation standards development activities, including national hearings and field trials. In addition to authoring and co-authoring more than 100 evaluation reports, he has published widely on assessment and evaluation. He has received funding from NIH, NSF, FIPSE, DE, HHS, NEA and numerous private foundations. In addition, he currently serves as chair of the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Evaluators Definitions Working Group. He maintains active members in the American Psychological Society, American Evaluation Association, and the American Educational Research Association.

Lyn M. Shulha is Professor and a Director of the Assessment and Evaluation Group, Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada. Lyn has served on the JCSEE since 2003, sponsored by the Canadian Society for the Study of Education. Lyn is also a long time active member of the American Evaluation Association. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Evaluation, The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, the Journal Evaluation and Program Planning, and is an Associate Editor of the new international journal, Assessment Matters. An active evaluator and researcher in assessment and evaluation, Lyn’s interests include the use of evaluative inquiry in school university professional learning partnerships, collaborative and participatory approaches to evaluation, classroom assessment practices and assessment as pedagogy.

Rodney K.M. Hopson is Hillman Distinguished Professor, Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership in the School of Education, and faculty member in the Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research, Duquesne University. With funding support from W.K. Kellogg Foundation, National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and other funding streams, Hopson has raised more than $3 million in the last five years in the support of graduate and post-graduate students of color in natural and social sciences to contribute to the development of interests that focus on democratically-oriented evaluation and research approaches and practices in traditionally underserved communities in the U.S. One book, The Role of Culture and Cultural Context in Evaluation: A Mandate for Inclusion, the Discovery of Truth and Understanding (with Stafford Hood & Henry Frierson, Information Age: Greenwich, CT, 2005), provides import to how the evaluation community attends to matters of culture and cultural context, especially in reconstituting knowledge production in the field. In addition, Hopson has served on several editorial boards related to evaluation, such as American Journal of Evaluation, Encyclopedia of Evaluation, Evaluation and Society book series, and the Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation. Recent professional service includes former membership on the Board of Directors of the American Evaluation Association, and founding Project Director, American Evaluation Association/Duquesne University Graduate Education Diversity Internship Program.

Flora A. Caruthers is the Staff Director for Technical Services and Staff Development for the Florida Legislature’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA). Since joining the staff in 1982, she has served in a variety of positions, including leader for a number of education-related program evaluations. Since 1996 she has been responsible for OPPAGA′s personnel, budget, staff recruitment, and training functions. Her previous professional experiences include service as an elementary school teacher, university administrator and faculty member, and evaluation consultant for postsecondary education. She also served as President of the Southeast Evaluation Association. She has served as the National Legislative Program Evaluation Society’s liaison to the JCSEE since 2000, and has is in her second three year term on the Executive Board.