Comprehensive yet accessible, this book provides a practical introduction to the skills, attitudes, and methods required to assess the worth and value of human services offered in public and private organizations in a wide range of fields. Readers are introduced to the need for such activities, the methods for carrying out evaluations, and the essential steps in organizing findings into reports. The book focuses on smaller projects carried out by an internal evaluator (i.e., on the work of people who are closely associated with the service to be evaluated), and is designed to help program planners, developers, and evaluators to work with program staff members who might be threatened by program evaluation. Features case studies and short profiles of individual program evaluators engaged in conducting evaluations in private service agencies, foundations, universities, and federal, state, and local governments. Program Evaluation: An Overview. Planning an Evaluation. Selecting Criteria and Setting Standards. Developing Measures. Ethics in Program Evaluation. The Assessment of Need. Monitoring the Operation of Programs. Single Group, Nonexperimental Outcome Evaluations. Quasi-Experimental Approaches to Outcome Evaluation. Using Experiments to Evaluate Programs. Analysis of Costs and Outcomes. Qualitative Evaluation Methods. Evaluation Reports: Interpreting and Communicating Findings. How to Encourage Utilization. For Program Evaluators, Program Planners, Program Administrators, Public Administrators in all types of human services--Criminal Justice, Corrections, Public Health, Public Administration, Community Nursing, Educational Administration, Substance Abuse Program Administration, Social Work, etc.
Emil J. Posavac (Ph.D., University of Illinois, Champaign) is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Loyola University of Chicago, where he served as director of the Applied Social Psychology Graduate Program and chairman of the Psychology Department.
He believes that everyone does program evaluation and that everyone should evaluate more wisely than we usually do. When you pick a college, or apply for a job, or vote for a candidate, you have done a program evaluation. When politicians make policies for other people and spend other people's money, it is important to evaluate wisely. Valid evaluations can lead us to more effective novel efforts, the improvement of existing efforts, and the weeding out of ineffective ones. We really ought to do it better.
Prof. Posavac has consulted with a number of public and private organizations. He has published scores of papers and chapters, edited or co-edited six volumes on program evaluation and applied social psychology, and written numerous evaluation reports for health care and educational institutions. He has written a textbook (with Eugene B. Zechmeister) on statistical analysis based on emerging orientations that emphasize a more complete understanding and presentation of data. In 1990, he was awarded the Myrdal Award by the American Evaluation Association for his contributions to the advancement of program evaluation practice. Since his retirement from Loyola he has taught at the University of Rochester (Simon Graduate School of Business), Rochester Institute of Technology, and Trevecca Nazarene University. He teaches English as a Second Language at his church in Franklin, Tennessee.
