I explore how "low-quality evidence" from program performance might still be useful in decision-making. Conceptually, a local government named "Here" is motivated to consider a program from "Elsewhere" that seems to show year-over-year exemplary performance. Here must manage five sources of uncertainty about whether…

International Leadership Association's "General Principles for Leadership Programs" is a fluid document designed to provide resources to create, redesign, and assess leadership programs. This article provides a broad introduction to the "General Principles for Leadership Programs," including the history and a brief overview of…

Higher education leaders face growing pressure to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of not only their institution but also each academic program offering. With increasing accountability and limited time for meaningful reflection on student learning and development, now is the time to rethink how a quasi-annual academic program review…

Given decision-makers often prioritize causal research that identifies the impact of treatments on the people they serve, a key question in education research is, "Does it work?". Today, however, researchers are paying increasing attention to successive questions that are equally important from a practical standpoint--not only does it…

The International Leadership Association's General Principles for Leadership Programs provides a useful frame for developing, delivering, and assessing leadership programs. In doing so, it is important for leadership scholars, educators, and practitioners to acknowledge and reflect on the complexities of our world, which moves toward strategies to…

The recognition that researcher discretion coupled with unconscious biases and motivated reasoning sometimes leads to false findings ("p-hacking") led to the broad embrace of study preregistration and other open-science practices in experimental research. Paradoxically, the preregistration of quasi-experimental studies remains uncommon…

Power has always been an element of the program evaluation field, however, it has traditionally been attributed a negative connotation. With that in mind, power is seen as a force possessed to some extent by different stakeholders that can be imposed over others, and by which certain views, ideas, and decisions can be adopted. Given that program…

How do we begin to assess the reciprocal impacts--or lack thereof--of community service on individuals and communities? Community engagement initiatives are increasingly valued as powerful educational tools and vehicles for social change. Yet, the task of measuring their outcomes remains complex. This article outlines core considerations in…

Over the last decade, the idea of societal impact resulting from publicly funded research has changed from being a relatively fringe concern related to high-technology entrepreneurship and spin-off companies to becoming an increasingly important public policy concern. This has stimulated academic science policy research to investigate the impact…

Indiana University (IU) is accredited through the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), which requires accredited institutions to regularly review programs within the institution and act upon the outcomes of the review. There is no single campus-based system for program reviews; therefore, the Office of Collaborative Academic Programs (OCAP) developed…

Program evaluation can seem like a daunting task, but it is an important charge to undertake. This article is designed to provide gifted coordinators, teachers, and anyone else who wants to complete a program evaluation with guidance on how to work through a program evaluation by establishing the importance of program evaluation (e.g., Callahan,…

This article is based on the premise that the international scientific community needs a generic theoretical framework to explain the determinants and mechanisms associated with learning opportunities for trainers in the field of training and development. Therefore, we adapted offer-and-use models for the continuous training of schoolteachers to…

This paper will highlight the work at Delaware State University, an HBCU, on experiential education projects through a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence grant. It focuses on assessing experiential learning curriculum in individual courses as well as evaluating student growth from research and external opportunities. It…

Logic modeling, the process that explicates how programs are constructed and theorized to bring about change, is considered to be standard evaluation practice. However, logic modeling is often experienced as a transactional, jargon-laden, discrete task undertaken to produce a document to comply with the expectations of an external entity, the…

Most program evaluation efforts concentrate on assessments of "program implementation" and "program outcomes." However, another area of programs that has not received sufficient attention in the literature is evaluating the plan of the program. Since the quality of the plan and planning process can influence program…