Six papers discuss the increasing role of federal Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) in program evaluation. This issue presents an overview of such inspections, case studies from three federal agencies, and a review of questions and concerns about inspections by OIGs. (SLD)

Methods useful in identifying and assessing outcomes of relatively simple programs may not be practical or appropriate for complex programs and systems. Comparative case study methods are recommended for dealing with such global outcomes of planned organizational change. (Author)

Stakeholder-based studies modify the relationship between evaluator and user, producing conflict that can cause evaluators to regress to familiar, traditional patterns that leave interactive evaluation strategies only partially implemented. (Author/PN)

The evaluation activities of HEW's Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation are used as a case study of a central evaluation unit in a multilevel organization. Several evaluation roles are discussed: oversight, coordination, leadership, and information dissemination. (Author/AL)

Case studies of educational program evaluations demonstrate that utilization of evaluative information occurs; however, its forms and the forces influencing utilization are complex. Naturalistic methods were used to study utilization. (See RIE: ED 174 666). (Available from: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 433 California St., San Francisco, CA 94104, single…

Dynamics of a large, expensive, and controversial surface and underground evaluation of a radioactive waste management program at the Yucca Mountain power plant are reviewed. The use of private contractors in the quality assurance study complicates the evaluation. This case study illustrates high stakes evaluation problems. (SLD)

The evaluators of Push/Excel assumed that it was a systematically developed program with measurable outcomes, not a charismatically inspired movement whose effects would be hard to pin down. As a result, neither the program nor the evaluation approach used were adequately tested. (Author)

Critiquing the stakeholder idea, the author states: if government chooses to take account of competing views in social program evaluation, it can get a better result if it encourages the competing views to find a voice of their own, not to speak through the government's chosen instrument. (Author/PN)

Deliberately involving urban education stakeholders in the Cities-in-Schools evaluation study improved the utility of the findings for formative evaluation stakeholders but not for summative evaluation stakeholders. (Author/PN)

Stakeholder evaluation was designed to address widely recognized problems in the conduct of evaluation. However, global propositions about the problems and prospects of program evaluation obscure the circumstances in which social science can contribute to social problem solving. (Author/PN)

Permeated with ethical and political concerns, with racial gender, and cultural differences, this case study deals with specifics of Native American education in Canada. It is an example of educational change and takes its meaning from that reality. (Author)

In evaluation, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts when quantitative and qualitative approaches and methods are combined. Some circumstances in which both approaches can be effectively combined are considered, and case studies of two evaluations using multiple methods are presented. (LMO)

In one federally funded program, the third-party evaluator was under contract with the program evaluated and not the federal funding agency. The social structure of this arrangement has implications for information utilization. (Available from: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 433 California St., San Francisco, CA 94104, single issue, $6.95.) (Author/GDC)

Seven articles highlight evaluations that are especially investigative in nature to examine how common elements in these studies can be used to improve evaluation and practice. The evaluator is seen as detective, ethnographer and management consultant, national program monitor and analyst, and international development specialist. (SLD)

The Chicago (Illinois) public school system has been undergoing a major restructuring that has shifted responsibility for running the schools to local school councils. The nine articles of this issue bring together opinions and research of a diverse group of authors with multiple perspectives on the effort. (SLD)