Explains the Bridge Evaluation Model that illustrates the process and factors that determine the outcome of an evaluation. Highlights include relationships between external factors including goals, interpersonal relationships, ethics, and politics; data collection and collation; and a sidebar that offers a case study involving the evaluation of…

Discussion of the four-level model of training evaluation focuses on the need for evaluation at level III, to show that training has been effective and that trainees behave differently on the job. Suggests data collection and measurement methods, including pretraining-posttraining evaluation, action plan audits, simulations, and unobtrusive…

This article offers a framework for collecting and analyzing speech samples to evaluate the phonological skills of young children, or of older children with delayed speech. A protocol for phonetic transcription is provided along with a discussion of the use of diacritics. The special problems of transcribing "fuzzy speech" are addressed. (Contains…

Data in social and behavioral sciences are often hierarchically organized. Special statistical procedures that take into account the dependence of such observations have been developed. Among procedures for 2-level covariance structure analysis, Muthen's maximum likelihood (MUML) has the advantage of easier computation and faster convergence. When…

In the present study, we have applied a word association procedure for assessing conceptual change in science education, leaning on the presuppositions of the theory of social representations. The proposed method was applied both before and after a university population ecology course. Our results have shown that the teaching procedure can change…

Ensuring that all Arizona children receive the high-quality education they deserve requires an effective teacher in every classroom along with school and district leadership that is focused on raising student achievement. Arizona's educators, from the classroom teacher to the district superintendent, are the most important component of the state's…

Conducting scientifically rigorous evaluations of character education interventions is complex. This evaluation guide is presented as a resource primarily for project directors who are federal grantees embarking on an evaluation of a character education intervention, although it contains useful information that can benefit other education…

The thesis of this paper is that, in evaluating most innovative educational projects that are conducted in schools, tenets of formal experimental design and associated inferential data analysis methods should be given limited emphasis. The basis of this thesis lies in the problems and difficulties that undermine the design and implementation of…

An evaluation was conducted to determine the outcomes and impacts of participation in the ALBERTA BEST training program in terms of participant attitudes toward service excellence and business profitability. ALBERTA BEST is a customer service program offered by the Alberta (Canada) government. The evaluation involved a series of case studies…

This manual, developed in an effort to take the mysticism out of program evaluation, discusses six phases of the program evaluation process. The introduction discusses reasons for evaluation, process and outcome evaluation, the purpose of the handbook, the evaluation process, and the Sequoia United School District Dropout Prevention Program. Phase…

Strengths and weaknesses of prevailing evaluation models are analyzed, with attention to the role of feedback in each paradigm. A framework is then presented for analyzing issues faced by evaluators of interactive instructional technologies. The current practice of evaluation relies heavily on 3 models developed over 20 years ago: (1) the…

This paper discusses a method of eliciting parental self-reports about child-rearing behavior. The method, called computer-presented social situations (CPSS), uses vignettes that are presented on computers. Several studies examined: (1) what mothers think about the technique; (2) reliability of data collected by the technique; and (3) validity of…

The Project on Secondary Analysis directed its attention to methodology and policy issues, focusing on reanalysis of existing data (1979-82)--surveys, program evaluations, etc.--as a vehicle for learning how to improve methods of obtaining and analyzing data, designing program evaluations, and constructing policy to enhance the quality and utility…

This how-to-do-it guide for Oklahoma public libraries to use in evaluating their performance defines the individual performance measures, explains the data collection and analysis procedures, shows example calculations, and discusses the analysis and presentation of the performance measures. The performance measures are presented in terms of the…

The concepts, definitions, and notation that have evolved with the development of telephone survey design methodology are discussed and presented as a unified structure. This structure is then applied to some of the more well-known telephone survey designs and alternative designs are developed. The relative merits of the different survey designs…