Download or read book Evaluating the Complex written by Mita Marra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the economic atmosphere following the crisis of 2008, not only have governments reacted by creating more complex policy initiatives, but they have also promised that all of these initiatives will be evaluated. Due to the complexity of many of the initiatives, the ways of evaluating are becoming equally complex. The book begins with a theoretical and conceptual explanation of the process and shows how this translates into the practice of evaluation. The chapters cover a wide variety of subjects, such as poverty, homelessness, smoking prevention, HIV/AIDS, and child labor. The use of case studies sheds light on the conceptual ideas at work in organizations addressing some of the world's largest and most varied problems. The evaluation process seeks a balance between order and chaos. The interaction of four elements—simplicity, inventiveness, flexibility, and specificity—allows complex patterns to emerge. The case studies illustrate this framework and provide a number of examples of practical management of complexity, in light of contingency theories of the evaluation process itself. These theories in turn match the complexity of evaluated policies, strategies, and programs. The evaluation process is examined for its impact on policy outcomes and choices.
Download or read book Dealing With Complexity in Development Evaluation written by Michael Bamberger and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2015-10-16 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognizing that complexity calls for innovative, conceptual, and methodological solutions, Dealing with Complexity in Development Evaluation by Michael Bamberger, Jos Vaessen, and Estelle Raimondo offers practical guidance to policymakers, managers, and evaluation practitioners on how to design and implement complexity-responsive evaluations that can be undertaken in the real world of time, budget, data, and political constraints. Introductory chapters present comprehensive, non-technical overviews of the most common evaluation tools and methodologies, and additional content addresses more cutting-edge material. The book also includes six case study chapters to illustrate examples of various evaluation contexts from around the world.
Download or read book Handbook Integrated Care written by Volker Amelung and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook gives profound insight into the main ideas and concepts of integrated care. It offers a managed care perspective with a focus on patient orientation, efficiency, and quality by applying widely recognized management approaches to the field of health care. The handbook also provides international best practices and shows how integrated care does work throughout various health systems. The delivery of health and social care is characterised by fragmentation and complexity in most health systems throughout the world. Therefore, much of the recent international discussion in the field of health policy and health management has focused on the topic of integrated care. “Integrated” acknowledges the complexity of patients ́ needs and aims to meet it by taking into account both health and social care aspects. Changing and improving processes in a coordinated way is at the heart of this approach.
Download or read book Developmental Evaluation written by Michael Quinn Patton and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 2010-06-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developmental evaluation (DE) offers a powerful approach to monitoring and supporting social innovations by working in partnership with program decision makers. In this book, eminent authority Michael Quinn Patton shows how to conduct evaluations within a DE framework. Patton draws on insights about complex dynamic systems, uncertainty, nonlinearity, and emergence. He illustrates how DE can be used for a range of purposes: ongoing program development, adapting effective principles of practice to local contexts, generating innovations and taking them to scale, and facilitating rapid response in crisis situations. Students and practicing evaluators will appreciate the book's extensive case examples and stories, cartoons, clear writing style, "closer look" sidebars, and summary tables. Provided is essential guidance for making evaluations useful, practical, and credible in support of social change.
Download or read book Evaluating Educational Interventions written by T. Chris Riley-Tillman and published by Guilford Publications. This book was released on 2020-03-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction to design and analysis for educational intervention -- The nuts and bolts of single-case design -- The classic A-B-A-B design -- Complex single-case designs -- Visual analysis and interpretation strategies for single-case design -- Advanced empirical analyses of single-case data in practice and research -- Brief experimental analysis -- Single-case design for research purposes -- A response-to-intervention model incorporating experimental design.
Download or read book Evaluating and Valuing in Social Research written by Thomas A. Schwandt and published by Guilford Publications. This book was released on 2021-09-17 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much applied research takes place as if complex social problems--and evaluations of interventions to address them--can be dealt with in a purely technical way. In contrast, this groundbreaking book offers an alternative approach that incorporates sustained, systematic reflection about researchers' values, what values research promotes, how decisions about what to value are made and by whom, and how judging the value of social interventions takes place. The authors offer practical and conceptual guidance to help researchers engage meaningfully with value conflicts and refine their capacity to engage in deliberative argumentation. Pedagogical features include a detailed evaluation case, "Bridge to Practice" exercises and annotated resources in most chapters, and an end-of-book glossary.
Download or read book Evaluating the Complex written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Working with Assumptions in International Development Program Evaluation written by Apollo M. Nkwake and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major reason complex programs are so difficult to evaluate is that the assumptions that inspire them are poorly articulated. Stakeholders of such programs are often unclear about how the change process will unfold. Thus, it is so difficult to reasonably anticipate the early and midterm changes that need to happen in order for a longer-term goalto be reached. The lack of clarity about the “mini-steps” that must be taken to reach a long-term outcome not only makes the task of evaluating a complex initiative challenging, but reduces the likelihood that all of the important factors related to the long term goal will be addressed. Most of the resources that have attempted to address this dilemma have been popularized as theory of change or sometimes program theory approaches. Although these approaches emphasize and elaborate the sequence of changes/mini steps that lead to the long-term goal of interest and the connections between program activities and outcomes that occur at each step of the way, they do not do enough to clarify how program managers or evaluators should deal with assumptions. Assumptions, the glue that holds all the pieces together, remain abstract and far from applicable. In this book the author tackles this important assumptions theme head-on-covering a breadth of ground from the epistemology of development assumptions, to the art of making logical assumptions as well as recognizing, explicit zing and testing assumptions with in an elaborate program theory from program design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
Download or read book Evaluating Professional Development written by Thomas R. Guskey and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how to better evaluate professional development in order to ensure that it increases student learning, providing questions for accurate measurement of professional development and showing how to demonstrate results and accountability.
Download or read book Evaluating Social Programs and Problems written by Stewart I. Donaldson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-01-30 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents visions of how to solve social problems in the 21st century and how programs SHOULD be evaluated, not how they will be evaluated.
Download or read book Principles Focused Evaluation written by Michael Quinn Patton and published by Guilford Publications. This book was released on 2017-09-28 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can programs and organizations ensure they are adhering to core principles--and assess whether doing so is yielding desired results? From evaluation pioneer Michael Quinn Patton, this book introduces the principles-focused evaluation (P-FE) approach and demonstrates its relevance and application in a range of settings. Patton explains why principles matter for program development and evaluation and how they can serve as a rudder to navigate the uncertainties, turbulence, and emergent challenges of complex dynamic environments. In-depth exemplars illustrate how the unique GUIDE framework is used to determine whether principles provide meaningful guidance (G) and are useful (U), inspiring (I), developmentally adaptable (D), and evaluable (E). User-friendly features include rubrics, a P-FE checklist, firsthand reflections and examples from experienced P-FE practitioners, sidebars and summary tables, and end-of-chapter application exercises. ÿ
Download or read book Critical Thinking written by Peter M. Nardi and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Critical Thinking: A Methodology for Interpreting Information 'deconstructs' common errors in thinking and teaches students to become smarter consumers of research results. Written to complement a textbook or a collection of readings, this brief methods book strengthens students' ability to interpret information whenever and wherever data are used. It includes a wide range of examples along with end of chapter exercises for further discussion. This book will be a coursebook for the undergraduate social science courses where critical thinking, numeracy, and data literacy are common learning objectives"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book System Evaluation Theory written by Ralph Renger and published by IAP. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Too often evaluation findings end up on the shelf! Why? Many interventions have several moving parts working together to achieve something each part cannot do independently. Unfortunately, many of the available evaluation approaches oversimplify this reality. A major reason for this is that evaluators do not have a blueprint to plan, and the associated methods to execute, an evaluation fit for this purpose. As such, they revert to using methods with which they are familiar, but are not suitable, for evaluating complex interventions. Consequently, the evaluation findings do not make sense to decisionmakers, so they are ignored. This book provides evaluators of all skill levels with a simple 3-step framework, System Evaluation Theory, that will lead to more actionable recommendations because the methods better capture the reality in which interventions operate; that is as a system. The book first reviews the limitations of program evaluation approaches that pointed to a need for a different way of thinking, one grounded in systems. After defining a system, the book explains how SET is intentionally aligned to evaluate a system’s two essential properties: interdependence and emergence. Individual chapters are dedicated to explaining how to execute each SET step. Throughout, the author draws on real-world examples and those from his own evaluations to help bridge the theory-practice divide. The reader is then shown how to use SET to develop actionable recommendations.
Download or read book Purposeful Program Theory written by Sue C. Funnell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-09 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between good intentions and great results lies a program theory not just a list of tasks but a vision of what needs to happen, and how. Now widely used in government and not-for-profit organizations, program theory provides a coherent picture of how change occurs and how to improve performance. Purposeful Program Theory shows how to develop, represent, and use program theory thoughtfully and strategically to suit your particular situation, drawing on the fifty-year history of program theory and the authors' experiences over more than twenty-five years. "From needs assessment to intervention design, from implementation to outcomes evaluation, from policy formulation to policy execution and evaluation, program theory is paramount. But until now no book has examined these multiple uses of program theory in a comprehensive, understandable, and integrated way. This promises to be a breakthrough book, valuable to practitioners, program designers, evaluators, policy analysts, funders, and scholars who care about understanding why an intervention works or doesn't work." Michael Quinn Patton, author, Utilization-Focused Evaluation "Finally, the definitive guide to evaluation using program theory! Far from the narrow 'one true way' approaches to program theory, this book provides numerous practical options for applying program theory to fulfill different purposes and constraints, and guides the reader through the sound critical thinking required to select from among the options. The tour de force of the history and use of program theory is a truly global view, with examples from around the world and across the full range of content domains. A must-have for any serious evaluator." E. Jane Davidson, PhD, Real Evaluation Ltd. Companion Web site: josseybass.com/go/funnellrogers
Download or read book Evaluating Measurement Accuracy written by Semyon G. Rabinovich and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-12-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Evaluating Measurement Accuracy" is intended for anyone who is concerned with measurements in any field of science or technology. It reflects the latest developments in metrology and offers new results, but is designed to be accessible to readers at different levels: meteorologists, engineers and experimental scientists who use measurements as tools in their professions, graduate and undergraduate students in the natural sciences and engineering, and technicians performing complex measurements in industry, quality control, and trade. The material of the book is presented from the practical perspective and offers solutions and recommendations for problems that arise in conducting real-life measurements. This inclusion is a notable and unique aspect of this title as complex measurements done in industry and trade are often neglected in metrological literature, leaving the practitioners of these measurements to devise their own ad-hoc techniques.
Download or read book 0 written by W. James Popham and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What's wrong with today's teacher-evaluation systems-and how to improve them Unsound teacher evaluation practices lead to misinformed decisions regarding strategies for student learning, resulting in negative effects to students. Education measurement and evaluation expert W. James Popham critiques what is wrong with many existing teacher-evaluation systems and offers an alternate system that respects the professionalism and dignity of teachers. Popham argues that, because teaching is a very situation- specific profession, the use of any paint-by-numbers, one- size-fits-all teacher evaluation system is patently absurd. Rather, the only defensible approach to teacher evaluation is to base it on collegial judgment, that is, on the evaluative conclusions of experienced teachers who have been specifically trained and formally certified to carry out this function. This book discusses: Key strengths and weaknesses of prominent teacher-evaluation evidence How to improve a flawed teacher-evaluation program The merits of a teacher evaluation program based on "evidence-governed collegial judgment
Download or read book Evaluating Research in Health and Social Care written by Roger Gomm and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2000-11-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains and critically evaluates a range of research techniques for the caring professions.
