Evaluation Use and Decision-Making in Society PDF Download

Author: Christina A. Christie
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1681230062
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
This volume addresses a fundamental and highly debated issue in the evaluation field – the use of evaluation information for decision-making. Chapter authors honor the contributions of Professor Marvin C. Alkin to the evaluation use literature and advance our thinking on the topic by exploring a wide range of issues related to the theoretical and practical challenges of using evaluation information to make informed, evidence-based decisions. Readers will come away from this volume with a new and clearer understanding of the theoretical, contextual, methodological, and political dimensions of use and with direction for practice. Chapters are written by leading evaluation scholars, including Ernest House; Stewart Donaldson and Tarek Azzam; Eric Barela; Richard D. Nunneley, Jr., Jean A. King, Kelli Johnson, and Laura Pejsa; Eleanor Chelimsky; Michael Quinn Patton; and Wanda D. Casillas, Rodney K. Hopson and Ricardo L. Gomez. Evaluation Use and Decision-Making in Society: A Tribute to Marvin C. Alkin will be of great interest to evaluation students, scholars and practitioners. This volume has scholarly application for those who desire a state-of-the-art resource for the latest insights and perspectives on one of the most pressing issues that the evaluation field faces today, while also serving as a useful guide for both novice and experienced evaluation practitioners. It is appropriate for use in a variety of evaluation courses including Introduction to Evaluation and Procedural Issues in Evaluation as well as topical seminars such as Evaluation Use and Decision-Making.

Author: Michael Quinn Patton
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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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: James E. Veney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description

Author: Marthe Hurteau
Publisher: IAP
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
This book provides a contemporary and thought-provoking exploration of the concept of practical wisdom--what it is and how it can be incorporated into evaluation practice. It defines what practical wisdom is, explores its roots, where it stands today, what constitutes the "wise" evaluator, and how we can develop sound judgment in an unpredictable and chaotic time. It brings together evaluation thought leaders and practitioners to examine the concept of practical wisdom. The authors’ enlightening essays are interwoven with reflective strands comprised of commentaries, examples, and new ideas added by Hurteau and her colleagues that offer a recursive and intricate pattern of reflection on the topic of practical wisdom. This is a rare book because it moves beyond evaluation methodology to explore how practical wisdom can help us develop new and better solutions for difficult evaluation situations. It will become a standard reference for practitioners, trainers. and teachers of evaluation because it considers the history, ethics, and competencies that underpin practical wisdom, and examines the ways that this untaught skill can be applied, to do, as House says, “the right thing in the special circumstances of performing the job.”

Author: Jill Anne Chouinard
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1641137711
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Evaluation use was identified by Henry and Mark (2003) as being the single most studied area in the field of evaluation. They refer with a sense of nostalgia to the ‘golden age’ of research on use perhaps almost implying that it came and went. Professor J. Bradley Cousins has had a longstanding and continuing commitment to advancing theory and practice regarding use through empirical research on evaluation, and through the professional development of students and practitioners within North America and internationally. The important influence and impact of the contributions of Cousins and associates is the focus of this edited book. This book brings together a distinguished, international group of authors, to reflect on the areas of contribution of Professor Cousins, and situate his work within contemporary areas of evaluation research and practice. Each chapter describes how the study and practice of evaluation has weaved its way through our understanding of organizational learning, participatory evaluation, and evaluation capacity building. The book concludes with a reflection by Professor Cousins himself on what these insights mean for the field of evaluation, and what future areas of research and contribution can be planned for and anticipated.

Author: Ralph Renger
Publisher: IAP
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
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.

Author: Laura W. Perna
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783030313647
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Published annually since 1985, the Handbook series provides a compendium of thorough and integrative literature reviews on a diverse array of topics of interest to the higher education scholarly and policy communities. Each annual volume contains chapters that discuss salient dimensions of scholarly and policy inquiries on topics pertaining to college students and faculty, organization and administration, curriculum and instruction, policy, diversity issues, economics and finance, history and philosophy, community colleges, advances in research methodology and more. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of research findings on a selected topic, critiques the research literature in terms of its conceptual and methodological rigor and sets forth an agenda for future research intended to advance knowledge on the chosen topic. The series is fortunate to have attracted annual contributions from distinguished scholars throughout the world.

Author: Saville Kushner
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1681236907
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
How do research students and their supervisors respond in a world of ‘fake news’, the destabilisation of public institutions and the rise of populism? The very foundations of our liberal democracies seem to be under threat, and this implicates social inquiry. Postgraduate research remains one of the few information spaces which are still free of politicisation and committed to validation. This book focuses on democracy in inquiry, and on the role of inquiry in a democracy – how research helps us to deliberate over what counts as of public value. It is a research methods book, but methods shaped by political and ethical purposes, and by the challenge of making judgements about what, in the public sphere, is worthy. We may be looking at a police training program, the siting of a clean energy project, a new school curriculum, maternal health program or an environmental adaptation project – in each case and in others like them we have to negotiate perspectives and claims, forge and justify a consensus, support competing stakeholders with the best information and analyses possible. And we have to make our work defensible – undeniable in the forum of public debate and exchange, examination and accountability. This book, full of examples from contemporary research projects, is designed to help navigate our way through the complexities of social research which focuses on judgements about public action. The book was written with research students and includes examples of their work. It recognises that supervisors often struggle as much as students in meeting the challenges of inquiry that involves some element of evaluative judgement – inquiry that potentially carries consequences. Where there are no quick-and-ready recipes, check-lists or theoretical frameworks – where we confront the particularities of the context in which the research takes place, we are all forced back onto good methodological thinking, and this is the pedagogical framing of the book.

Author: Donna Podems
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1681237903
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Democratic evaluation brings a way of thinking about evaluation’s role in society and in particular, its role in strengthening social justice. Yet the reality of applying it, and what happens when it is applied particularly outside the West, is unclear. Set in South Africa, a newly formed democracy in Southern Africa, the book affords an in-depth journey that immerses a reader into the realities of evaluation and its relation to democracy. The book starts with the broader introductory chapters that set the scene for more detailed ones which bring thorough insights into national government, local government, and civil societies’ experience of evaluation, democratic evaluation and their understanding of how it contributes to strengthening democracy (or not). A teaching case, the book concludes by providing guiding questions that encourage reflection, discussion and learning that ultimately aims to inform practice and theory.

Author: Michael Quinn Patton
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1544379471
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The Fifth Edition of the bestselling Utilization-Focused Evaluation provides expert, detailed advice on conducting evaluations that promote effective use of the findings. Chock full of useful pedagogy, this book presents Michael Quinn Patton′s distinctive opinions based on more than forty years of experience, and also the expertise of new co-author Charmagne E. Campbell-Patton. The authors begin by describing the essence of utilization-focused evaluation, and then outline 10 operating principles. They conclude with chapters focused on how evaluation can be used to promote a more thoughtful, equitable, and sustainable world. Richly illustrated with examples, figures, and cartoons, this engaging text shows readers how to design and conduct evaluations that provide useful findings, and which contribute to a more equitable society. A companion website is available to accompany this book.