Every university and nonprofit in the country is interested in raising more money. Many universities spend millions of dollars to hire experienced staff, build databases, and pay for prospect travel. The question becomes, What is the return on investment? With significant and sometimes drastic budget cuts, university programs are increasingly…

A critical theory lens is used to explore the role of evaluation in youth development, a field aimed at recognizing youth as assets. A theory of change in the field is questioned for its emphasis on individual youth outcomes as programmatic outcome measures. A review of 209 evaluations of 131 programs in the Harvard Family Research Project's…

Never before in the history of the teaching profession has there been such a need for comprehensive evaluation of all teacher preparation programs, most especially professional development schools (PDSs). This need is driven not only by the pressures of the age of accountability, but also by the need for the PDS movement to act ethically and…

In connection with the Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009, GAO (Government Accountability Office) was required to study the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), a federal source of evidence about effective education practices. Operating through a 5-year contract awarded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the WWC…

Operating a quality assurance system in tertiary education is the rule rather than the exception, because of the belief that it will improve quality. However, proving this is not easy. This study examines three ways of providing the evidence: the a "priori" method, the stepwise backtracking method, and the external evaluation method. The…

In educational effectiveness research, multilevel data analyses are often used because research units (most frequently, pupils or teachers) are studied that are nested in groups (schools and classes). This hierarchical data structure complicates designing the study because the structure has to be taken into account when approximating the accuracy…

Language, literacy and numeracy are necessary for greater workforce participation, productivity and social inclusion. Being able to measure the level of proficiency in these skills, and any changes in the level of skills, is important for getting a sense of how well language, literacy and numeracy programs are working. Two measurement tools used…

In large-scale assessments, such as state-wide testing programs, national sample-based assessments, and international comparative studies, there are many steps involved in the measurement and reporting of student achievement. There are always sources of inaccuracies in each of the steps. It is of interest to identify the source and magnitude of…

Researchers have linked self-efficacy to performance, but they have not investigated the relationship between self-efficacy and knowledge and skills tests within a training evaluation setting, which is the main purpose of this study. Additionally, researchers have acknowledged self-efficacy scores may be distorted as a result of assessors…

This special series focused on treatment integrity in the child mental health and education field is timely. The articles do a laudable job of reviewing (a) the current status of treatment integrity research and measurement, (b) existing conceptual models of treatment integrity, and (c) the limitations of prior research. Overall, this thoughtful…

The Anamnestic Comparative Self Assessment (ACSA) measure of subjective well-being (SWB) aims to reduce the problems of cultural bias and relativity to external standards by allowing people to define the endpoints or "anchors" of the measurement scale. In medical terminology anamnestic denotes "based on memory". The ACSA uses…