The Evaluation Hierarchy
Vocabulary
Chapters 1-4
Chapters 5-7
Chapters 8-12
100
answers questions about cost
What is assessment of program cost and efficiency?
100
the extent to which a measure produces the same results whne used repeatedly to meaure the same thing
What is reliability?
100
individuals, groups, or organizations that have significant interest in how well a prgram functions
What are stakeholders?
100
a data system, ususally computerized, that routinely collects and reports information
What is a management information system (MIS)?
100
the "gold standard" for research design
What is randomized field experiment?
200
answers questions about the conceptualization and design of the program
What is assessment of program design and theory?
200
assignment of potential targets to intervention and control groups on the basis of chance
What is randomization?
200
the evaluator takes the primary responsibility for developing the plan, conducting the evaluation, and disseminating the results
What is an independent evaluation?
200
this gives the program a blueprint for effective management
What is the program theory?
200
one can have a 95% confidence level when statistical significance is found at this level
What is <.05?
300
answers questions about the nature of the social problem and the need for intervention
What is assessment of need for the program?
300
the individual, family, etc. to which a program intervention is directed
What is target?
300
a method in which a person interviewed is asked to suggest additional knowledgeable people to interview
What is snowball sampling?
300
a term that indicates how well something measures what you want measured
What is validity?
300
this error happens when statistical significance is found but there is really no program effect
What is a Type I error?
400
answers questions about the results of the program
What is assessment of program outcome/impact?
400
teh responsibility of program staff to provide evidence to stakeholders and sponsors
What is accountability?
400
First of all, good evaluation questions should be these three things:
What are reasonable, appropriate, and answerable?
400
includes questionnaires, attitude scales, knowledge tests, and systematic observation coding schemes
What are measurement procedures?
400
outcomes of the program are expressed in monetary terms
What is cost-benefit analysis?
500
answers questions about operations, implementation, and service delivery
What is assessment of program process and implementation?
500
the extent to which subgroups of a target population are reached unequally by a program
What is bias?
500
good questions contain these so the identified dimensions of the program performance can be judged
What are performance criteria?
500
results of program implementation that are surprises
What are unintended outcomes?
500
the set of activities through which knowledge about evaluation findings is made available to the range of relevant audiences
What is dissemination?
M
e
n
u