Evaluation capacity building, or ECB, is an area of great interest within the field of evaluation as well as in Extension evaluation. Internal Extension evaluators have long offered training and technical assistance to help Extension educators conduct evaluation. Today ECB in Extension encompasses myriad activities and processes to advance…

Accomplishments of a research development program (RDP) funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work (UT-SSW) were far-reaching. Benefits included training for faculty and doctoral students on the federal grant proposal process, an increase in investigator-initiated research development…

The authors provide a selected review of mental health and educational concerns evident in U.S. middle schools and describes promising and important strategies to ameliorate the high rates of students with mental health and academic difficulties. Despite some promising and important strategies, service systems are fragmented, and comprehensive…

One hundred and sixty-four children from a rural county in the state of Maryland, USA, were followed longitudinally from birth until kindergarten entry, tracking their participation in a home visiting program designed to enhance parent child interaction and school readiness. Results suggest that duration of home visiting had a positive, direct…

In this paper, we present data from an evaluation of the educational impact of a school breakfast program implemented in rural schools in Peru. The results showed positive effects on school attendance and dropout rates, and a differential effect of the breakfast program on multiple-grade and full-grade schools. Particularly in multiple-grade…

The evaluation of bilingual education in the Basque Country has gone through different stages during the last 25 years. From 1983 onwards, language models of schooling A, B and D were developed, according to parental choice. Model A is not considered a bilingual education model, since L2 is taught as a subject only, while models B and D are…

Evaluation research pertaining to the development of assessment instruments that fully capture the facets of empowerment prevention perspectives among youth are sparse. With funding from the American Legacy Foundation, the University of New Mexico Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, in partnership with the New Mexico State…

In this article, a process evaluation of a school-based, violence intervention program is presented. The program was modeled after bullying prevention programs described by Daniel Olweus (1993) whose components were implemented to achieve student safety goals. The process evaluation instrument used in this study was developed by a rural Midwestern…

Objective: To evaluate the New York State Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program using economic methodology. Design: Data were collected by nutrition educators in a pretest, posttest design with an epidemiological modeling approach to assess costs and estimate potential health benefits of the state program. Setting: Cooperative Extension,…

Objective: Although current UK policy argues that schools have a key role in raising health standards, emphasis on the core curriculum restricts teachers' opportunities to undertake health promotion activities. The challenge is to design effective health promotion interventions that minimize pressures on teaching staff and curriculum space. Here…

This document reports on an evaluation project to determine the effectiveness of the Fast Track method of instrumental music instruction as applied to beginning band instruction. The Fast Track music system is unique because it simultaneously aids both visual and aural learning by using a book and cassette tape approach to instruction. Traditional…

When analyzing open-ended or categorical questions, many times responses are cross-classified by other categorical variables. The resulting contingency tables are then analyzed using the chi square test of independence. This procedure leads to multiple significance tests and provides no method to assess higher order interactions. Loglinear…

This report from the Legislative Office of Education Oversight (LOEO) focuses on Head Start implementation in Ohio, describing its growth over the last 8 years, services provided to children and their families, costs, program quality and how it is monitored, and the challenges faced in expansion. After an extensive summary, chapter 1 describes the…

Between 1990 and 1993 the Department of Energy's precollege mathematics and science program budget grew approximately 1,250 percent. This report responds to questions about how effectively the Department of Energy manages its precollege mathematics and science program. The following questions are addressed: (1) the appropriateness of the…

This project, funded by the Office for Substance Abuse Prevention (OSAP), is a comprehensive, multilevel prevention model for elementary school students, grades K-6. The project is based on OSAP's risk and resiliency factor model in which factors presumed to predispose youth toward or away from alcohol and other drug (AOD) use are influenced,…