This article addresses the debate on pre-evaluative choices of impact depictions and the forms of responses between applicants and funders. By adopting a reflexive perspective on the social impact of social sciences, this article explores researchers' vocabularies in the research proposals and mid-term reports of consortiums during the Strategic…

The landscape of medical education is continuously evolving, as are the needs of the learner. The appropriate use of research and evaluation is key when assessing the need for change and instituting one's innovative endeavours. This paper demonstrates how research seeks to generate new knowledge, whereas evaluation uses information acquired from…

Evaluators report effects of education initiatives as standardized effect sizes, a scale that has merits but obscures interpretation of the effects' practical importance. Consequently, educators and policymakers seek more readily interpretable translations of evaluation results. One popular metric is the number of years of learning necessary to…

Practice and Research Together (PART) is an Ontario-based research utilization initiative, the core function of which is to distil and disseminate practice-relevant research findings to child welfare practitioners. This article addresses (a) the mission and goals of the PART program; (b) the key components of the program design; (c) the conceptual…

Current economic conditions and the increasing competition for government funding are leading to an increased focus on the impact of research. Measuring the impact of research is difficult because not all impacts are direct and some can be negative or result from the identification of problems that require a non-research response. The time between…

In February 2009, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) commissioned RAND Europe to review approaches to evaluating the impact of research as part of their wider work programme to develop new arrangements for the assessment and funding of research--referred to as the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The objectives were 1) to…

In 2006, six community and technical colleges in Washington State joined the innovative national reform initiative called Achieving the Dream (ATD). This report describes the progress each college made in implementing ATD's "culture of evidence" principles for institutional improvement, examines strategies implemented by the colleges to…

The educational evaluation utilization of 47 Title IV-C projects in Minnesota funded in FYs 1975 and 1976 is examined. Findings suggest that these evaluations have had an impact, not only at the project level, but also in contributing to the validation of exemplary projects for wider dissemination. (RL)

Linkages between utilization and stakeholder participation in the evaluation process are discussed, with emphasis on the communication of results. Data from two small-scale participatory evaluations are used to support the argument that key elements of the participatory process can be linked to meaningful and multiple forms of research…

Steps in presenting evaluation recommendations are outlined. The steps include the following: the development of effective recommendations, the presentation of effective recommendations, and the effective following up of recommendations. (TJH)

Program-theory approaches to evaluation have gained acceptability over the past 25 years as a means for examining conditions for implementation that are associated with better outcomes and developing detailed program theory. They have also gained confusion, as witnessed in the review of recent studies in this article. (Author/SLD)

In the last 10 years, there has been increased use of case study methodology, with accompanying refinement and improvement of the methods. Case studies have become legitimate research methods in evaluation, but it is too soon to say whether improvements in methodology are really resulting in improvements in the case studies conducted. (SLD)

A series of workshops to help British nurses learn to appraise research and use it in practice was evaluated through questionnaires and study of three workshop sites. The programs effectively reduced fear and increased understanding of research, overcoming the problem of jargon. Critical appraisal skills were improved. (SK)

Using the Cognitive Research Trust (CoRT) Thinking Project as an illustration, two problems are discussed: the difficulty of deciding just what to investigate, and how to control the continual development that is necessary throughout the duration of a project. (BW)

Program portrayal is one way of addressing the need for increased descriptive capability in evaluation research. Portrayal supplements traditional reporting by utilizing subjective, anecdotal, or impressionistic information, in an appropriately communicable form, to enrich the description of program transactions, settings, and outcomes. It is…