To date, evaluation research and policy analysis have focused mainly on average program impacts and paid little systematic attention to their variation. Recently, the growing number of multi-site randomized trials that are being planned and conducted make it increasingly feasible to study "cross-site" variation in impacts. Important…

The purpose of this study is to extend the work of Spybrook and Raudenbush (2009) and examine how the research designs and sample sizes changed from the planning phase to the implementation phase in the first wave of studies funded by IES. The authors examine the impact of the changes in terms of the changes in the precision of the study from the…

In this article, a group of inservice providers and beginning researchers describe their experiences in learning to conduct evaluation research on a long-term school-university partnership program. We offer the practical lessons we learned in how to undertake such a study, and we share the immediate and powerful effects that the process of…

The purpose of this article is to develop guidelines to assist practitioners and researchers in evaluating and developing rigorous case studies. The main concern in evaluating a case study is to accurately assess its quality and ultimately to offer clients social work interventions informed by the best available evidence. To assess the quality of…

This article describes rates of missing item responses in personal digital assistant (PDA) assessments as compared to paper assessments. Data come from the evaluation of a classroom-based leisure, life skills, and sexuality education program delivered to high school students in Cape Town, South Africa. Analyses show that the paper assessments had…

Increasingly, government, foundations, and others are asking community-based organizations for more evaluation information. Although the demand for this information may be increasing, the field knows very little about the way organizations are responding to this demand. Using data collected from interviews and a mail survey of community-based…

Describes the a-e-I-o-u program evaluation approach, a framework for organizing key evaluation questions that allows for many models of evaluation and/or methods of data collection. Evaluations by users of the approach have indicated that it provides a practical way to organize evaluation questions and collect appropriate data. (GCP)

This evaluation plan, which is updated annually, provides a synthesis of the various evaluation activities of Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL). During 1999, the fourth year of the Laboratory's contract period with the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, special studies and integrated studies were designed to…

This guide is designed as a resource for leaders and evaluators of K-12 online learning programs. In this guide, the term "online learning" is used to refer to a range of education programs and resources in the K-12 arena, including distance learning courses offered by universities, private providers, or teachers at other schools;…

The presentation of case study research in this book is based on a disciplined, qualitative inquiry into a single case, rather than quantitative methodologies or case studies for instructional purposes. Practical suggestions are given for gathering and organizing data and for data interpretation and reporting. (SLD)

School-linked services are one program approach seeking to address concerns about fragmented and duplicative services by offering the school site as a single point of entry. Most of these programs display a holistic approach to children, joint planning, shared service delivery, and collaboration or coordination. Determining how school-linked…

Many school districts lack in-place processes for planning and evaluating their programs. In addition, most practicing educators do not have much time to design and carry out program evaluations. This handbook provides a practical guide to program evaluation drawn from action-research principles. The book uses effective, low-cost practices that…

Research practitioners have traditionally collected and analyzed data using experimental designs and inferential statistical procedures. In addition to being difficult to learn and apply, these quantitative procedures generally leave out such variables as attitudes, feelings, and emotions. This paper describes the nature and role of qualitative…

This document contains the 2003 issues of a quarterly newsletter encouraging collaborative research and informed policy on welfare reform and focusing on use of an on-line database of child welfare research projects, as well as on research and policy issues related to implementation studies, indicators of well-being, and administrative data. Each…