Enhancing Evaluation Use PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Enhancing Evaluation Use PDF full book. Access full book title Enhancing Evaluation Use by Marlène Läubli Loud. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Marlène Läubli Loud
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1452205477
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book is valuable to those involved in the evaluation of public organisations. Particularly insightful is the realization that similar challenges faced in various organizations are addressed with very different solutions.
Author: Marlène Läubli Loud
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1452205477
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book is valuable to those involved in the evaluation of public organisations. Particularly insightful is the realization that similar challenges faced in various organizations are addressed with very different solutions.
Author: Marlène Läubli Loud
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1483321061
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Get Book Here
Book Description
Enhancing Evaluation Use: Insights from Internal Evaluation Units offers invaluable insights from real evaluators who share strategies they have adopted through their own experiences in evaluation. Readers will learn about the challenges, solutions, and lessons drawn from the experience of evaluators working in a wide range of organizations. Referencing the latest literature, contributors discuss factors that help or undermine attempts to foster an evaluative thinking and learning culture within an organization. Applicable in a wide range of situations, their accounts demonstrate the initiative and innovative thinking they use to address challenges in various, sometimes complex, evaluation settings. Questions at the end of each chapter stimulate thought and discussions about the issues raised and allow readers to apply their findings to their own situations. "This book speaks to a cutting-edge topic, that is, the potential to generalize program evaluation expertise to larger organizational questions, and the cases from multiple international contexts represent a unique feature." —John Clayton Thomas, Georgia State University "The use of actual cases to highlight major concepts in evaluation in the public sector is a great feature." —Danica G. Hays, Old Dominion University "The text provides practical information from a variety of organizational contexts and the integration of international experiences provides for expanded discussion of evaluation theory and practice." —Kathleen Norris, Plymouth State University "The key strengths of this book lie in its national, supra-national and international organizational contexts, its consistency in insider perspectives, and the detailed examples provided." —Donna Haig Friedman, University of Massachusetts, Boston "The book of essays reviewed here was edited by two eminent evaluators. It fills an important gap in the literature: in pursuit of improved quality of evaluation products, evaluation thinkers have lavished attention on evaluation methods, ethics and use but they have sorely neglected evaluation governance issues and have largely failed to probe the workings of evaluation within organizations. Yet, most evaluations are commissioned by (or undertaken within) organizations. The choices organizations make in structuring evaluation functions and designing evaluation processes have a major bearing on the relevance, validity and usefulness of evaluations. Refreshingly, the book offers fresh mental models and practical lessons about evaluation systems and practices adopted in diverse organizational settings. All contributors to the book are seasoned practitioners. They hail from national, supranational and international organizations and many of them have trespassed across these thematic and organizational boundaries. They all are equipped to draw on a vast reservoir of hands---on experience as evaluation commissioners, managers, internal evaluators or external practitioners. Remarkably, they also display considerable familiarity with relevant themes treated by the organization management and evaluation literature. Given its pragmatic focus the book is bound to elicit broad based interest among evaluation practitioners. While it addresses familiar dilemmas and challenges (evaluation independence, evaluation utilization, organizational learning, nurturing of an evaluation culture, etc.) it does so from the distinctive perspective of "insiders" who have had to contend with a variety of organizational constraints and management pressures. Revealingly most contributors find good reasons to be optimistic about the possibility of positive change. The stage is set by John Mayne whose introductory and authoritative chapter identifies the critical importance of organizational factors in the utilization of evaluation results. This is followed by Bastiaan de Laat’s chapter which puts forward an ingenious analytical construct: the "tricky triangle" of relationships that links commissioners, evaluators and evaluands. Specifically De Laat unmasks and assesses the different and complex configurations that result from this triangular interplay. Penny Hawkins’ elegant contribution underlines the importance of evaluation independence. It highlights the considerable impact that the electoral cycle may have on evaluation approaches. It also reveals that indigenous cultures may present formidable obstacles to the very notion of external evaluative oversight. The next chapter penned by Marlene Laubli’s is equally perceptive in tracing the creative adaptation that the evaluation function underwent in response to changes in the organizational force field of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health’s Evaluation Unit. In a similar vein Erica Wimbush provides a lucid exposition of the strategies used to bridge evaluative knowledge and management action in Scotland’s public health agency. Still within the health field, Nancy Porteous and Steve Montague show convincingly that transformative organizational change in Canada’s Public Health Agency was facilitated through judicious evaluation programming and what has come to be called "double loop learning". Finally, Bastiaan de Laat and Kevin Williams summarize important findings from of two empirical studies of evaluation use in the European Commission that go a long way in identifying good practices for evaluation commissioning in a supra--- national organizational context. The next two chapters of the book focus on two specialized agencies of the United Nations. They tread gently in what is admittedly a highly sensitive and contested terrain. Maria J. Santamaria Hergueta, Alan Schnur and Deepak Thapa discuss how the World Health Organization’s evaluation function evolved towards greater independence over several decades while Janet Neubecker, Matthew Ripley and Craig Russon focus on the innovative techniques used within the International Labour Organization to enhance utilization of self evaluation findings. The final chapter by Marlene Laubli Loud misses the opportunity to compensate for the "good news" bias that understandably characterizes the previous contributions. Surprisingly, it displays ambivalence towards evaluation independence which it equates with externality, a concept soundly rejected by de Laat. But setting this dimension aside, the chapter is interesting and valuable since it reflects the co---editor’ vast experience as an evaluator, evaluation trainer and evaluation manager in diverse national and international contexts. Thus the chapter provides a useful compilation of "take away" messages focused on good evaluation management practices. It is on solid grounds when it describes how to make effective use of advisory committees, motivate potential evaluation users, design good terms of reference, select the right evaluators, craft judicious evaluation policies and keep an eye out for political "windows of opportunity". Each chapter of the book concludes with a crisp exposition of overarching findings, discussion topics and references. Thus the volume should be of practical value to teachers, students, professional evaluators as well as evaluation commissioners and programme managers. All in all, this is a book that belongs on your shelf if you are intent on enhancing the role that evaluation plays in your organization." —Robert Picciotto, UKES Council Member
Author: Rosalie T. Torres
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761927549
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Get Book Here
Book Description
Evaluation Strategies for Communicating and Reporting has been thoroughly revised and updated creating 75% new material and 34 new case examples. The Second Edition provides worksheets and instructions for creating a detailed communicating and reporting plan based on audience needs and characteristics. Authors Rosalie T. Torres, Hallie Preskill, and Mary E. Piontek cover advances in technology including Web site communications, Web and videoconferencing, and Internet chat rooms. Also mentioned are several additional topics for consideration, including communicating and reporting for diverse audiences and for multi-site evaluations.
Author: Michael Quinn Patton
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 1606238868
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Michael S. Trevisan
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1483324621
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Get Book Here
Book Description
Evaluability assessment (EA) can lead to development of sound program theory, increased stakeholder involvement and empowerment, better understanding of program culture and context, enhanced collaboration and communication, process and findings use, and organizational learning and evaluation capacity building. Evaluability Assessment: Improving Evaluation Quality and Use, by Michael Trevisan and Tamara Walser, provides an up-to-date treatment of EA, clarifies what it actually is and how it can be used, demonstrates EA as an approach to evaluative inquiry with multidisciplinary and global appeal, and identifies and describes the purposes and benefits to using EA. Using case examples contributed by EA practitioners, the text illustrates important features of EA use, and showcases how EA is used in a variety of disciplines and evaluation contexts. This text is appropriate as an instructional text for graduate level evaluation courses and training, and as a resource for evaluation practitioners, policymakers, funding agencies, and professional training. “The most impressive aspect of this book is that it positions EA as an approach that perfectly fits within the current philosophical views on program evaluation… The authors do a great job connecting these theories to practice, and provide good guidelines.” —Sebastian Galindo-Gonzalez, University of Florida “This book is focused on one very important topic in the scope of program evaluation content. It establishes the foundation for a variety of applications: impact assessment, program development, and formative evaluation. This text provides new insights and methods for conducting evaluability assessment.” —S. Kim MacGregor, Louisiana State University “The book is written in a very readable style, is well organized and referenced. I like the inclusion of case studies, guidelines for actually doing EA, and the extensive discussion of its alignment with other models of evaluation process.” —Iris Smith, Emory University
Author: Kim Forss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000167933
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362
Get Book Here
Book Description
Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation is the first book to advocate the virtues of a long-term perspective for policy evaluation as well as to show how evaluations can take a longer time perspective than they usually do. To get there, it is necessary to understand the decision-making context of evaluations and study the obstacles and the resistance toward long-term perspectives – as knowledge of that will lay the ground for more effective advocacy. The book is divided into three parts: the first section examines different aspects of methodology and methods. In the next section, authors present case studies of long-term evaluations, examine their own experiences of such evaluations and discuss difficulties, challenges and lessons learned. Cases discussed include: education sector reforms in Sweden, local governance reforms in Denmark, policy interventions in Southern Italy and Brazil, and Paris Declaration Principles of aid effectiveness such as Swedish aid to Tanzania, Vietnam, Laos and Sri Lanka. Finally, the third section sees the authors turn to a set of contextual issues and concluding remarks. Bringing together a rich collection of insights and a renowned group of experts, Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation: Increasing Relevance and Utility, constitutes a significant landmark in the field.
Author: James R. Dudley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190916672
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Get Book Here
Book Description
Social workers are increasingly faced with the demands of evaluating their own programs and practice to maintain accountability to funding agencies, secure funding, and remedy a number of social problems facing our society. One of the nine basic competencies required by the social work accreditation agency is to be able to conduct evaluations. Evaluation is a critical area of practice for demonstrating accountability to clients, communities, numerous other stakeholders, and funding and regulatory agencies. Social Work Evaluation, Third Edition, offers a straightforward guide to a broad range of social work evaluations at both the program and practice levels. Author James R. Dudley's seven-step approach to evaluation makes use of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed research methods to provide oversight and address important issues at the planning, implementation, and outcome stages of a program or practice intervention. His unique focus on involving clients in the evaluation process ensures that social workers consistently improve their capacity to impact their clients' well-being and remain accountable to them and others they serve. Case examples from the extensive evaluation experience of the author and others illustrate a wide range of logic-based methods discussed throughout the text for real-world application. This comprehensive text effectively aims to enhance student and practitioner skill sets to meet these demands of a changing field.
Author: Christina A. Russell
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1648022553
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Get Book Here
Book Description
Measure, Use, Improve! Data Use in Out-of-School Time shares the experience and wisdom from a broad cross-section of out-of-school time professionals, ranging from internal evaluators, to funders, to researchers, to policy advocates. Key themes of the volume include building support for learning and evaluation within out-of-school time programs, creating and sustaining continuous quality improvement efforts, authentically engaging young people and caregivers in evaluation, and securing funder support for learning and evaluation. This volume will be particularly useful to leadership-level staff in out-of-school time organizations that are thinking about deepening their own learning and evaluation systems, yet aren’t sure where to start. Authors share conceptual frameworks that have helped inform their thinking, walk through practical examples of how they use data in out-of-school time, and offer advice to colleagues.
Author: Michael Quinn Patton
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Get Book Here
Book Description
The second edition of Patton's classic text retains the practical advice, based on empirical observation and evaluation theory, of the original. It shows how to conduct an evaluation, from beginning to end, in a way that will be useful -- and actually used. Patton believes that evaluation epitomizes the challenges of producing and using information in the information age. His latest book includes new stories, new examples, new research findings, and more of Patton's evaluation humour. He adds to the original book's insights and analyses of the changes in evaluation during the past decade, including: the emergence of evaluation as a field of professional practice; articulation of standards for evaluation; a methodological synthesis of the qualitative versus quantitative debate; the tremendous growth of 'in-house' evaluations; and the cross-cultural development of evaluation as a profession. This edition also incorporates the considerable research done on utilization during the last ten years. Patton integrates diverse findings into a coherent framework which includes: articulation of utilization-focused evaluation premises; examination of the stakeholder assumption; and clarification of the meaning of utilization. --Publisher description.
Author: Martin H. Jason
Publisher: Corwin Press
ISBN: 1452211426
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Get Book Here
Book Description
This updated edition on evaluating the effectiveness of school programs provides an expanded needs-assessment section, additional methods for data analysis, and tools for communicating program results.
