Evaluation and Experiment
Some Critical Issues in Assessing Social Programs
Published on 24. September 2013
572 pages
978-1-4832-6084-6 (ISBN)
Description
Evaluation and Experiment: Some Critical Issues in Assessing Social Programs is a collection of papers presented at the 1973 symposium held at The Battelle Seattle Research Center. This book contains eight chapters that consider some selected aspects of the problems in evaluating the outcomes of socially important programs, such as those dealing with education, health, and economic policy. The first chapter provides an overview of the issues around the Social Program Evaluation. The next chapters deal with the successes and failures brought by social innovations; the quasi-experimental evaluation in compensatory education to estimate the true effects of such education programs; and the usefulness and validity of econometric and related nonexperimental approaches for assessing the effects of social programs. These topics are followed by surveys of a number of additional program-evaluation studies, particularly in the field of family planning or fertility control, mostly carried out as experiments or quasi-experiments in Asian and Latin American countries. Other chapters describe the decision processes that involve explicit assessment of the worth or merit of outcomes and employ multivalued utility analysis and outline the ways in which evaluative data are useful in providing feedback to program or institutional operations and decisions. The final chapter discusses resolutions for some of the disagreements expressed by others concerning the role of field experiments, constraints in their utilization, and other factors that enter into a comprehensive conception of program evaluation.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Carl A. Bennett | Arthur A. Lumsdaine
Evaluation and Experiment
Some Critical Issues in Assessing Social Programmes
Book
01/1975
Academic Press
€60.66
Article exhausted; check different version
Content
Preface1. Social Program Evaluation: Definitions and Issues I. Introduction II. Purposes and Functions of Evaluation A. Definitions and Distinctions B. Evaluation as Part of the Feedback Process C. Relation of Output Measures to the Feedback Process D. Some Questions About the Purpose and Utilization of Evaluation III. Methodology in Impact Assessment A. Some General Considerations B. Data Needs and Analysis IV. Assessment and Value Judgments A. Values and Evaluation B. Criterion Formulation V. Some Organizational and Ethical Issues VI. Critical Issues2. Assessing Social Innovations: An Empirical Base for Policy I. The General Idea II. Introduction A. The Plan of the Paper B. Evaluating Social Programs C. Initial Ignorance D. Methods of Investigation E. Large and Small Effects III. Three Instructive Examples A. The Salk Vaccine Trials B. The Gamma Globulin Study C. Emergency School Assistance Program D. Afterword IV. Ratings of Innovations A. Sources of the Studies and Their Biases B. Medical and Social Innovations C. Our Ratings of Social Innovations D. Social Innovations E. Summary for Social Innovations F. Evaluations of Socio-Medical Innovations G. Summary for Socio-Medical Innovations H. Evaluations of Medical, Mainly Surgical, Innovations I. Summary of Medical Ratings J. Summary of Ratings V. Findings from Nonrandomized Studies A. Nonrandomized Studies B. Nonrandomized Studies in Medicine C. Summary for Section V VI. Issues Related to Randomization A. The Idea of a Sample as a Microcosm B. Searching for Small Program Effects C. Studying the Interaction Effects in Social Programs D. Unmeasurable Effects E. Validity of Inference from One-Site Studies F. Does Randomization Imply Coercion? G. The Ethics of Controlled Field Studies H. Need to Develop Methodology I. Need for an Ongoing Capability for Doing Randomized Controlled Field Studies VII. Issues of Feasibility in Installing Program Evaluations A. Specifying the Treatment B. Incentives for Participation C. A Multiplicity of Program Goals VIII. Costs, Timeliness, and Randomized Field Studies A. Costs and Benefits of Doing Randomized Controlled Field Studies B. Value of a Field Trial C. The Question of "Gradualism" D. "Stalling" and Evaluating Innovations E. Time and Doing Field Studies IX. Issues That Arise in Implementing Innovations A. Evolutionary Development of Programs B. Field Trials and Policy Inaction C. Political Obstacles X. Findings and Recommendations A. The Results of Innovations B. Findings for Nonrandomized Trials C. Beneficial Small Effects D. Costs and Time E. Feasibility of Randomized Trials F. Evolutionary Evaluations G. Long-Run Development H. Controlled Trials vs. Fooling Around3. Making the Case for Randomized Assignment to Treatments by Considering the Alternatives: Six Ways in Which Quasi-Experimental Evaluations in Compensatory Education Tend to Underestimate Effects I. Introduction II. Common Sense and Scientific Knowing III. Experimentation in Education IV. Six Sources of Underadjustment Bias A. Systematic Underadjustment of Preexisting Differences B. Differential Growth Rates C. Increases in Reliability with Age D. Lower Reliability in the More Disadvantaged Group E. Test Floor and Ceiling Effects F. Grouping Feedback Effects V. Summary Comments4.
