Program Evaluation: Methods and Case Studies - Hardcover

Posavac, Emil J.; Carey, Raymond G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0132275600 ISBN 13: 9780132275606

Publisher: Pearson, 2006

Synopsis

For upper-level undergraduate/ graduate-level courses in Program Evaluation, Program Planning, Program Administration, and Public Administration.  

 

Comprehensive yet accessible, this text 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. Students are introduced to the need for such activities, the methods for carrying out evaluations, and the essential steps in organizing findings into reports. The text focuses 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.

About this title

About the Author

Emil J. Posavac (Ph.D., University of Illinois, Champaign) is professor of Psychology at Loyola University of Chicago where he has served as director of the Applied Social Psychology Program and chairman of the Psychology Department. He has consulted with a number of public and private organizations. He has published sixty 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 is currently completing a textbook (with Eugene B. Zechmeister) on statistical analysis based on emerging orientations that emphasize a more complete understanding and presentation of data. He is a member of the American Psychological Society, the Society for the Advancement of Social Psychology, and the American Evaluation Association, among other groups. In 1990, he was awarded the Myrdal Award by the American Evaluation Association for his contributions to the advancement of program evaluation practice.

Raymond G. Carey (Ph.D., Loyola University of Chicago) is principal of R. G. Carey Associates. He was the vice president of Parkside Associates, Inc., a member of the Lutheran General Health Care System (now Advocate Health Care). Widely published in the fields of health services and quality assurance, Dr. Carey has consulted on employee attitudes and quality assurance to hospitals throughout the U.S. In addition, he was a member of the Technical Advisory Panel of the Post-Acute Care Study for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He teaches quality improvement procedures for hospital managers seeking to improve the quality of their health services. Carey is the author of Managing to Win: Evaluating the Use of Human Resources in Health Care Organizations and Measuring Quality Improvement in Healthcare: A Guide to Statistical Process Control Applications (with Robert C. Lloyd).

From the Back Cover

Posavac and Carey provide a comprehensive, but accessible, introduction to the field of program evaluation featuring methods needed to evaluate programs offered in public and private mental health, educational, health care, criminal justice, and human resource organizations. By adopting a flexible philosophy of evaluation, the authors demonstrate how program evaluation can be applied to answer a wide variety of questions in many different settings. The sixth edition includes case studies of completed program evaluations and sketches of the careers of program evaluators to help readers develop an appreciation of the applicability of evaluation methods.

The authors stress the importance of working with representatives of all groups affected by a program, whether they be program staff or managers, recipients. or people providing financial or moral support. The Improvement-Focused Model of Evaluation can be used to include many people in the evaluation process. The teat shows that the application of program evaluation serves to contribute to making society more effective, just, and healthy.

Sixth Edition Highlights

• Strong emphasis on keeping evaluations focused on contributing to program improvement
• Greater emphasis on the value of clarifying the conceptual foundation of programs to be evaluated
• Additional illustrations of statistical techniques useful in program evaluation
• Updated citations and suggestions for further study
• Guidance for obtaining information from sources available on the Internet

Edition details

• Publisher: Pearson
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0132275600
• ISBN 13: 9780132275606
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320