Evaluation for Learning
| News for an Evaluating Community | Spring 2000 |
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EVALUATION TRAININGS Looking for help evaluating a collaborative initiative, such as Strong Families/Safe Children, Child Protection Community Partners, 0-3 Secondary Prevention Initiatives, or Multi-Purpose Collaborative Bodies? The Michigan Public Health Institute offers affordable training on outcomes, objectives, logic models, process evaluation, outcome evaluation, and linking data collection to strategic planning. West Michigan trainings: June 28-Okemos, August 3-Kalamazoo, September 13-Ludington. Cost for one-day training with lunch: $10. To register, contact Sherry Whalen at 888/347-2400 ext. 7391 (ph), 517/381-0260 (fax), or swhalen@mphi.org. Looking for help evaluating a direct service program? United Way of America's "Measuring Program Outcomes" addresses measurement and analysis of participant outcomes in a 4-session series of training: Mondays, 1:30-4:30 p.m., September 11, 18, 25 and October 2, Greater Kalamazoo United Way Board Room Cost: $15. To register, contact Elaine Griffin at 616/343-2524 (ph) or 616/344-7250 (fax).
LISBETH SCHORR ADVOCATES EVALUATION FOR LEARNING: Schorr explained that she traveled the country in the 1980s to identify the characteristics of successful programs for children and families. She published her findings in Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage (1988). Five years later Schorr found that half of the 25 programs she described had disappeared and none of the remaining programs had expanded or been replicated. Her second book, Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America (1997), examined reasons for that lack of growth. Evaluation Schorr believes that attitudes toward evaluation have limited the size and vigor of the "knowledge base," that is, the set of strategies and techniques widely accepted as "best practices." Schorr points out that we have the shared determination to rebuild civic society-to have children ready for school, in relationship with mentors, giving back to their communities, and so forth-but no widely shared understanding of how to do it. The type of evaluation traditionally considered the source of best practice information has severe limitations. Traditional evaluation has credibility because it has promised to use the biomedical model, which features random assignment to control and experimental groups to test for a causal relationship between one factor and one or more outcomes. However, if we limit ourselves to random assignment studies, then we are limited to a single remedy. Interventions that change one thing at a time tend to fail, most likely because they change only one thing at a time. The multi-faceted interventions that generally yield better results present messy, difficult assessment issues. These complex interventions exceed the capacity of the biomedical model. Schorr maintains that evaluators, service providers, funders, and legislators need to accept a different approach to rigor and credibility. She says we must abandon the notion of certainty about causation. We need to be certain of results, but not of which precise factor caused which precise effect. NEXT ISSUE: Schorr on different approaches to evaluation
NOTEWORTHY RESOURCES The Harvard Family Research Project newsletter, Evaluation Exchange (1999, Vol. 5, No. 2/3) features articles on evaluation of collaboratives and initiatives, including:
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Asking Good
Collecting and
Using the
Continuing
Evaluation for
Evaluation for Learning Greater Kalamazoo Evaluation Project with support from the Greater Kalamazoo United Way, the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, and the Kalamazoo Foundation
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THE GREATER KALAMAZOO EVALUATION PROJECT PUBLISHES
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Send your ideas and examples to: |
Denise Hartsough Greater Kalamazoo United Way 709 S. Westnedge Avenue Kalamazoo, MI 49007-5099 |
PH: (616) 343-2524 FAX: (616) 344-7250 |