This article provides the background and describes the processes involved in establishing a national approach to benchmarking the way universities engage with their local and regional communities in Australia. Local and regional community engagement is a rapidly expanding activity in Australian public universities and is increasingly being seen as…

The objective of this paper is to discuss the utilization of Stake's theory of responsive evaluation by a unit in state government charged with the evaluation of the Illinois Migrant Program. Through interviews with state and local Title I staff, we were able to discover program purposes and concerns and to later conceptualize these concerns into…

This study of nine Little League teams revolved around the following problems and questions: (a) role or status of Little League baseball as sport or athletics; (b) conflict in the interface of local, provincial, national, and international organizations; (c) relative significance of variables of technical skills, administrative decision-making,…

Discusses ways in which a community-based program evaluation can be enhanced by using a screening tool to delineate the program's evaluative needs, resources, and commitments. Describes use of the Evaluation Pre-Screening Tool and reports on some examples of successful use. (SLD)

Describes the efforts of one community to define, begin, and finally, embrace community evaluation in the evaluation of a Smart Start program in Cumberland, North Carolina. Lists lessons learned in "selling" the evaluation to the community. (SLD)

Proposes a framework for the evaluation of health and human services programs in community settings. Applies this framework to the discussions in this special issue to see how well the chapters advance community-based program evaluation. Concludes that the chapters are valuable for those interested in improving the evaluation of community-based…

This article presents an outcome-based model for evaluating school and community programs serving at-risk adolescents, and a cost-effective technique for comparing the progress of youth receiving an intervention with youth in a pseudocontrol group. The outcomes considered most important for success were derived from the literature pertaining to…

Many communities offer programs aimed at improving teen dating skills and knowledge about violence and sexual behavior. This research study evaluates one such program, operated by an interagency collaborative. Each of four participating community agencies provided one hour of curriculum during one week of health class. Lecture, group activities,…

An evaluation tool, the Evaluation Center Cube (ECC), is presented as a vehicle for establishing an analytic framework and uniting evaluation strategies. The ECC was developed in response to the Kellogg Foundation's need to categorize community-initiated funding proposals. As a classification tool, it facilitates proposal analysis and is…

Article defined community education, which was intended to control the predicament of overlapping programs, designed to fill leisure time, to coordinate existing programs, and to get more and better use out of community facilities and state and federal funds. (Editor/RK)

The final report of the project on community-based recreation for the handicapped details training activities, materials and evaluation findings. A chart lists approximately 40 primary training activities with information on date and location, faculty resource person, number attending, number of requests, and number of evaluations. The primary…

A program for training indigenous leadership in coping with the problems of urban society is described in this report. The report is divided into seven parts. The problems of organizational group identification and selection are considered in Part I. Part II contains material concerning the seminar representatives' organizations; the…

This report describes a trial of an evaluation plan for community school programs that was based on the Goal Attainment Scaling system developed by Kiresuk and Sherman. The author briefly discusses the goal attainment scaling process and then examines the advantages and disadvantages of that approach for evaluating community school programs. The…

Five preparatory steps for the evaluation of community-based programs, described as "front-end" challenges, are discussed: (1) understanding the reasons for the evaluation; (2) securing resources; (3) establishing credibility and enthusiasm; (4) developing consensus about goals and objectives; and (5) observing and fine tuning the…

A review of evaluations of community-based arts projects illustrates the methodological challenges of evaluating the arts and the issue of whether and how quantitative methods should be used. Eight studies revealed self-reports of personal, social, economic, and educational change, with few negative consequences. (Contains 52 references.) (SK)