Alan Rickman  died this month. He was an actor of my generation; one that provided me with much entertainment. I am sad. Then I saw this quote on the power of stories. How stories explain. How stories can educate. How stories can help reduce bias.  And I am reminded how stories are evaluative.

Dick Krueger did a professional development session (then called a “pre-session”) many years ago. It seems relevant now. Of course, I couldn’t find my notes (which were significant) so I did an online search, using “Dick Krueger and stories” as my search terms. I was successful! (See link.) When I went to the link, he had a whole section on story and story telling. What I remember most about that session is what he has listed under “How to Analyze the Story”. Specifically the four points he lists under problems with credibility:

• Authenticity – Truth
• Accuracy – Memory Problems
• Representativeness and Sampling
• Generalizability / Transferability

The next time you tell a story think of it in evaluative terms. And check out what Dick Krueger has to say.

I’ve started aggregating my blog posts (no easy task, to be sure) in preparation for developing the “modules” for a WECT-like approach to evaluation. The first section is Program Planning and Logic Modeling. The following posts are relevant (and presented in no particular order):

Relevant Resources

Focus Group Questions

TIMELY TOPIC: Planning your evaluation

Perpetual Beta

Stories as evaluation

How do you find the answer?

Language…what does it really mean and how do you know?

All of the people all of the time?

Standard evaluation tools

Logic models-a good tool?

Causal relationships, evaluation and logic models

Logic Models, again

Logic model revisited

There may be more that are remotely related to Program Planning and Logic Modeling. This was my first pass. The URLs work and will take you to a longer post. You may have to cut and paste.

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