Traditional diagnostic approaches with handicapped and nonhandicapped children usually occur outside the instructional context and focus on the learner. Accurate conclusions about the learner, however, can only be reached after an adequate diagnosis of instruction. (Author)

A full understanding of how a training program works requires field observations that examine the deep structure as well as the surface behavior of those in the program. Such comprehensive understanding is not available from questionnaires and interviews. (Author/IRT)

Describes how some of the problems of evaluating noncollegiate educational programs have been circumvented by an Illinois evaluation team (Project for the Evaluation of Noncollegiate Sponsored Instruction). (JH)

Workshop evaluation has become more complex as adult learners diversify, their needs evolve, and additional stakeholders require evaluative data. The evaluation process should be integrated into program planning. (SK)

Conducted an economic evaluation of five outpatient adolescent treatment approaches (12 total site-by-conditions) to identify average economic costs to society. Results suggest that some types of substance-abuse intervention for adolescents can reduce social costs immediately after treatment. (SLD)

Examines the relationship between meaningful program implementation and capacity to assess the impact of James P. Comer's School Development Program in a large-scale study, describing how the impact study became an implementation study because of such factors as changes in study design, disappearing treatment, difficulties implementing randomized…

Advances the argument that advocacy in evaluation is inevitable when advocacy is understood as a value commitment to a particular representative ideal. The regulative ideal advanced in this article is a commitment to democratic pluralism. Three case examples illustrate these ideas. (SLD)

Evaluation reports produced in the Canadian Department of National Defense have been subject to peer assessment since 1972, but the evaluation literature contains little evidence to support the practice. Peer assessments are used to ensure that standards have been met, to correct errors, and to gain insight from reviewers. (Author/SLD)

Asserts that in developing Erdkinder, Montessori programs for adolescents, practitioners should use Montessori's principles of scientific pedagogy to establish methods for evaluating existing adolescent experiments. Suggests ways to apply criterion of normalization, and that "healing of deviations" comes from observing aspects like inner…

Provides perspective on the increasing involvement of young people in community evaluation research, identifies participation patterns and evaluation roles of young people, and draws conclusions from empirically based practice. (SLD)

Describes the challenges faced by researchers in evaluating a neighborhood revitalization project. Places the challenges in the context of three of the Program Evaluation Standards of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation: Values Identification, Fiscal Responsibility, and Analysis of Quantitative Information. (SLD)

Provides a historical accounting of the work of early African American educational evaluators to show the critical place of race and culture in both historical and contemporary visions of responsive evaluation. Discusses reasons their work has so largely been ignored. (SLD)

Offers consideration of the relationship between a responsive approach to the evaluation of educational programs and a personalized approach to the assessment of student achievement. Explores responsiveness as a motif for inquiry about program quality and student accomplishment, emphasizing the relationship between the two. (SLD)

Describes the development of a pilot uniform data set (UDS) intended to serve as the primary data collection mechanism for all grants and standard cooperative agreements funded by the U.S. Office of Minority Health. The UDS is the product of a formative research project with implications for other program evaluations. (SLD)

Proposed a three-phase model for program theory building and testing in evaluation and tested the model in studies involving 540 employees and 315 elementary school teachers. The studies show how to cumulate knowledge about evaluation and how knowledge can be derived from evaluation. (SLD)