Evaluation Essentials

From A to Z

Marvin C. Alkin, Anne T. Vo, Christina A. Christie

• Publisher: The Guilford Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781462555468
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Research in Education
• Index: Social Sciences

Beloved for its conversational style and reliable advice, this text is now in a revised and updated third edition, reflecting key developments in evaluation. It includes expanded coverage of equity and social justice issues, values and cost analysis, visualizing qualitative data with software, and more. Twenty-six concise chapters, or "sessions, " give students, applied researchers, and program administrators a solid foundation for conducting or using evaluations. Covering both quantitative and qualitative methods, the book emphasizes fostering evaluation use. It shows how to build collaborative relationships with users; formulate answerable evaluation questions; deal with contingencies that might alter the traditional sequence of an evaluation; and collect, analyze, and report data. Student-friendly features throughout the sessions include titles written as questions, bulleted recaps, "Thinking Ahead" and "Next Steps" pointers, cautionary notes, and annotated suggestions for further reading. An in-depth case study provides the basis for end-of-session practice exercises. New to This Edition
*New sessions on context-sensitive evaluation, including the organizational, sociopolitical, and community contexts of a program.
*New or expanded discussions of timely topics: identifying evaluation decision makers, analyzing program costs, coding and visualizing qualitative data with software, and more.
*Updated suggestions for further reading and discussion in every chapter.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also Available
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• To the Reader
• Contents
• Overview
• Session A. What Is Evaluation?
• Session B. Why Do Evaluations?
• Time-Out: The RUPAS Case
• Case Study: The Rural Parents’ Support Program
• Session C. Who Does Evaluations?
• Session D. Who Are the Users of an Evaluation?
• Session E. How Do You Strengthen Relationships with Users?
• Session F. How Do You Describe the Program?
• Session G. How Do You “Understand” the Program?
• Session H. What Are the Questions and Issues to Be Addressed?
• Session I. What Are the Sociopolitical and Community Contexts of the Program?
• Session J. What Is the Organizational Context of the Program?
• Session K. What Are Instruments for Collecting Quantitative Data?
• Session L. What Are Instruments for Collecting Qualitative Data?
• Session M. How Do Data Collection Issues Impact Potential Evaluability?
• Session N. Are the Questions Evaluable?
• Session O. How Do We Plan for Process-Focused Evaluation?
• Session P. How Do We Plan for Outcome-Focused Evaluation?
• Session Q. How Do We Manage the Evaluation?
• Session R. How Are Quantitative Data Analyzed?
• Session S. How Are Qualitative Data Analyzed?
• Session T. How Are Analyzed Data Used to Answer Questions?
• Session U. How Are Evaluation Results Reported?
• Session V. What Is the Evaluator’s Role in Evaluation Use?
• Session W. What Are the Evaluation Standards and Codes of Behavior?
• Session X. Contracting for Evaluations
• Session Y. How Are Costs Analyzed?
• Session Z. Context-Sensitive Evaluation: Attaining Evaluation Use
• Appendix A. Use Factors: Relationship to Research Compilations
• Appendix B. How Can You Embark on a Program to Learn More about Evaluation?
• Appendix C. An Evaluation Lesson
• Index
• About the Authors
• About Guilford Press
• Discover Related Guilford Books