Impact evaluation and measurement are highly complex and can pose challenges for both social impact providers and funders. Measuring the impact of social interventions requires the continuous exploration and improvement of evaluation approaches and tools. This article explores the available evidence on meta-evaluation--the "evaluation of…

Many studies of education interventions make claims about impacts on students' outcomes. Some studies have designs that enable readers to make causal inferences about the effects of an intervention but others have designs that do not permit these types of conclusions. To help policymakers, practitioners, and others make sense of study results, the…

Multisite trials, which are being used with increasing frequency in education and evaluation research, provide an exciting opportunity for learning about how the effects of interventions or programs are distributed across sites. In particular, these studies can produce rigorous estimates of a cross-site mean effect of program assignment…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evaluates research studies that look at the effectiveness of education programs, products, practices, and policies, which the WWC calls "interventions." Many studies of education interventions make claims about impacts on students' outcomes. Some studies have designs that enable readers to make causal…

With the push for evidence-informed policy and practice, schools and policy makers are now increasingly encouraged and supported to use and enagage with research evidence. This means that consumers of research will now need to be discerning in judging the quality of research evidence that will inform their decisions. This paper evaluates the…

Objectives: This study examined how evaluation and intervention research (IR) studies assessed statistical change to ascertain effectiveness. Methods: Studies from six core social work journals (2009-2013) were reviewed (N = 1,380). Fifty-two evaluation (n= 27) and intervention (n = 25) studies met the inclusion criteria. These studies were…

Successful school reform is dependent on the quality of decisions made by educational leaders. In such decision making, educational leaders are charged with using sound research findings as the basis for choosing school reform initiatives. As part of the debate regarding the usability of various evaluative research designs in providing information…

This paper provides practical guidance for researchers who are designing and analyzing studies that randomize schools--which comprise three levels of clustering (students in classrooms in schools)--to measure intervention effects on student academic outcomes when information on the middle level (classrooms) is missing. This situation arises…

The aim of this dissertation is to identify effective educational interventions in Sub-Saharan African with an impact on student learning. This is the first meta-analysis in the field of education conducted for Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper takes an in-depth look at twelve different types of education interventions or programs and attempts to not…

Postdeployment family reintegration and relationship breakdown among combat veterans has received considerable attention from the Department of Defense and the media. Social interventions have been developed as a family strengthening strategy. In this article, we present a university-Wounded Warrior partnership where a relationship enhancement…

Implementation refers to the process by which an intervention is put into practice. Research studies across multiple disciplines, including education, have consistently demonstrated that interventions are rarely implemented as designed and, crucially, that variability in implementation is related to variability in the achievement of expected…

Schools are held more responsible for evaluating, quality assuring and improving their student assessments. Teachers' lack of understanding of new, competence-based assessments as well as the lack of key stakeholders' involvement, hamper effective and efficient self-evaluations by teachers of innovative, competence-based assessments (CBAs). While…

This report summarizes the complex research literature on quantitative methods for assessing how impacts of educational interventions on instructional practices and student learning differ across students, educators, and schools. It also provides technical guidance about the use and interpretation of these methods. The research topics addressed…

The primary aim of the Middle School Intervention Project (MSIP) is to evaluate the impact of a multi-component intervention for struggling adolescent readers on reading outcomes. The intervention consists of: (1) targeted, Tier 2 reading and (2) school engagement interventions, and (3) data-based-decision-making (DBDM) teams to review and act on…

This study describes a well-defined data-driven diagnostic identification and selection procedure for choosing students at-risk of academic failure for appropriate academic support services. This algorithmic procedure has been validated both by historical quantitative studies of student precedents and outcomes as well as by current qualitative…