Although there is high interest in determining whether or not an educational program provides good value for its cost, it is difficult to make this determination, since people are not generally conceptualized as products and since educational benefits are not easily translated into financial terms. Economic principles suggest that the cost of…

An ethnographic evaluation adapts data collection and analytical methods of the ethnographer to the purpose of decision-making. Ethnography and evaluation differ in determination of problems addressed by the researcher. Ethnographers are interested in slow cultural change, while evaluators address policy questions requiring immediate answers. The…

One part of the work being done at the Center for the Study of Evaluation has been the development of kits to assist the staffs of elementary schools wishing to conduct evaluations. The third kit in the series provides specific techniques for conducting a formative evaluation, which includes verifying the extent to which a program has been…

Education is one important role of zoos, but there is relatively little research on the extent to which zoos are serving this role. Traditional methods for collecting and analyzing such information have significant disadvantages in zoo settings and should be supplemented (not replaced) by nonreactive measures. To test this concept, teams of…

Traditional methods of ethnographic data collection and analysis can be adapted to conducting summative evaluations of educational programs, particularly those for American Indians. Such evaluations can be approached from a micro-ethnographic standpoint (in which the school alone is studied as a subculture) or a macro-ethnographic standpoint (in…