program evaluation « Evaluation is an Everyday Activity

“Engaged scholarship most commonly refers to a range of collaborative research, teaching, and learning initiatives rooted in sustained community-university partnerships and pursued across various disciplines and social and cultural contexts.” That is a commonly agreed upon definition of engaged scholarship. So let me ask you: Are blogs engaging?

If I tease apart the definition this way:

it is collaborative IF (and only if) you consider that reading a lot of other blogs is collaborative learning (someone writes; someone reads=collaboration);
that is sustained in a “partnership” that consists of other bloggers who are in the community and bloggers who are in the university;
that is pursued across various disciplines (remember, I read a lot of other blogs); and
that are in a variety of social and cultural contexts (remember, I read a lot of other blogs);

then I would say yes…and no…because what is really collaborative learning? Or collaborative teaching? (I’m certainly not doing research.) To me, collaboration is an agreed upon working together in an intellectual effort. I would guess that in this case there is tacit agreement; I write and the reader agrees to read either by subscription or random search engine optimization. Some how that feels really one sided–until I realize that I’m still getting comments on posts that I wrote two-three years ago. So something must be engaging–even if it is random SEO. (though I’m not sure it is collaborative in the usual sense of collaboration).

And since this is a blog about evaluation, my question is, “How do you know?” Chris Lysy has a cartoon about knowing that always makes me smile (actually several). .. Remember, you need a rubric to determine if something works you cannot work on gut impressions; only through rigorous evaluation can you determine if a program has merit, value, worth (the root of evaluation is value); and only if you have evidence do you know it works. Can I use comments (many over the last four years of this blog) to say the blog is engaging, that I have evidence? One comment received in the last week suggested that since folks are still commenting on this post, perhaps that is evidence….don’t know.

Any thoughts–comments are welcome; please.

My .

molly.

On May 9, 2014, Dr. Don Kirkpatrick died at the age of 90. His approach (called a model) to evaluation was developed in 1954 and has served the training and development arena well since then; it continues to do so.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Kirkpatrick model, here is a primer, albeit short. (There are extensive training programs for getting certified in this model, if you want to know more.)

Don Kirkpatrick, Ph. D. developed the Kirkpatrick model when he was a doctoral student; it was the subject of his dissertation which was defended in 1954. There are four levels (they are color coded on the Kirkpatrick website) and I quote:

Level 1: Reaction

To what degree participants react favorably to the training

Level 2: Learning

To what degree participants acquire the intended knowledge, skills, attitudes, confidence and commitment based on their participation in a training event

Level 3: Behavior

To what degree participants apply what they learned during training when they are back on the job

Level 4: Results

To what degree targeted outcomes occur as a result of the training event and subsequent reinforcement

Sounds simple, right. (Reminiscent of a logic model’s short, medium, and long term outcomes). He was the first to admit that it is difficult to get to level four (no world peace for this guy, unfortunately). We all know that behavior can be observed and reported, although self-report is fraught with problems (self-selection, desired response, other cognitive bias, etc.). Continue reading →

Recently, I received the following comment: “In today’s world it’s virtually impossible to keep up with facebook, twitter, news, tv, movies email, texts, etc.”

It was in response to a blog post about making a difference. How do you know? Given that most of what was suggested happens in the virtual world, the play on words is interesting. How is it impossible–because there is too much information? because you are too distracted by the virtual part of all the information and get lost? because virtuality it is not clearly understood? because of something else? I personally find I can get lost when I spend all day on line (virtual). It isn’t real, actually. I have no sense of what is happening and what isn’t happening. Even with the feeds from news lines, I find I have to double check my facts. Yet even as I say this, the virtual is expanding (go here). I have heard about Web 2.0; hadn’t heard about IoE (Internet of Everything)…the CEO of Cisco (John Chambers) stated that the IoE depends on the architecture, the systems integration. Is virtual the way of the world? It certainly isn’t the future any more; it is now. I have to ask, though, what about people…Given that much evaluation is now being done with the use of virtual tools, are we really understanding what difference is being made? Or are there just connections?

The individual continued with the comment by saying, “Keep up your small voice. Some are listening.” Those “listening” are certainly reflected in the number of comments I received on the posts about making a difference in the last two days (over 45). This may certainly be a way of engaging; I know it is outreaching. It is only my small voice; it is rewarding to know that some are listening/reading. Even if they only stay a short while.

My two cents. (my small voice).

molly.

In a recent post, I said that 30 was the rule of thumb, i.e., 30 cases was the minimum needed in a group to be able to run inferential statistics and get meaningful results. How do I know, a colleague asked? (Specifically, “Would you say more about how it takes approximately 30 cases to get meaningful results, or a good place to find out more about that?”) When I was in graduate school, a classmate (who was into theoretical mathematics) showed me the mathematical formula for this rule of thumb. Of course I don’t remember the formula, only the result. So I went looking for the explanation. I found this site. Although my classmate did go into the details of the chi-square distribution and the formula computations, this article doesn’t do that. It even provides an Excel Demo for calculating sample size and verifying this rule of thumb. I am so relieved that there is another source besides my memory.

New Topic:

Continue reading →

Had a comment a while back on analyzing survey data…hmm…that is a quandary as most surveys are done on line (see Survey monkey, among others).

If you want to reach a large audience (because your population from which you sampled is large), you will probably use an on-line survey. The on-line survey companies will tabulate the data for you. Can’t guarantee that the tabulations you get will be what you want, or will tell you want you want to know. Typically (in my experience), you can get an Excel file which can be imported into a soft ware program and you can run your own analyses, separate from the on line analyses. Continue reading →

I had a comment about last week’s post on Sustainability and Evaluation. I will share it here. I wonder what you readers think of this comment:

In preventive health/health promotion, ‘sustainability’ has generally been used to indicate that the intervention program, or elements of it, or benefits of it, are continued beyond the life of the funded program. It is about extending the value of the investment in a program, beyond the life of the funded program. So it’s about a legacy, about the continuation of things achieved, about leaving things, circumstances or communities better off than when you first arrived (more empowered, more resourceful, more able to continue improvements on their own).

I wonder how that fits with the definitions I provided? Is this a different sustainability? Does it speak to the future generations? Does that include equity and justice? Continue reading →

To quote Annie Leonard, the word sustainability “gets thrown around all the time now and it’s not always clear what is intended.” She goes on to talk about the UN World Commission on Environment and Development definition of sustainable development as “…meeting the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” That is a good definition, I think. Yet it is missing something which (according to Leonard) are equity and justice. Robert Gilman defines sustainability as “…equity over time”. She says (and I agree), quoting the Center for Sustainable Communities, that sustainability “consider(s) the whole instead of the specific. Sustainability emphasizes relationships rather than pieces in isolation.”

Now, given that evaluation to be effective must look at the whole (here is a good example of when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts); and

given that evaluation works to find out information that will benefit both the current and future generations; and

given that evaluation works to determine what difference was made in people’s lives, it seems to me that there is a relationship here that needs to be acknowledged.

A colleague of mine works in youth development and loves the job. My colleague has to determine the value of the program; the program needs to be evaluated. Yet, if the work is only for the program (i.e., the pieces in isolation) not the whole, what good is it that my colleague loves the job? The relationship between the youth involved and the bigger picture is truly more than can probably be captured in any evaluation. Still, the evaluation needs to be planned to consider that, even if the resources are limited (that is the “probably” above).

So yes, evaluation has something to learn from sustainability. Certainly sustainability can learn from evaluation (and economics, and equity, and ecology…).

NEW TOPIC

I’ve been, once again, getting comments about making a difference. I thought I’d post some of those comments (I’ve copied and pasted comments so the spelling is as it appears in the original text):

…every blog post makes a difference in a way or in another. You can answer at your questions just seeing how many comments are here, how many people are interested in answering you. I think you are a good person, and everything said by a good person is always a life’s lesson to keep in mind. Thank you for every helpful information, good job!
It may be a temporary difference – i.e. limited on the time, but of course that at least for some seconds your writing are touching the life’s of all your readers.
Every blog or article makes a difference to those who read it! They might strongly agree or disagree with what the blogger has wrote, making a difference by reafirming there opinion or being outraged that somebody else looks at ideas different to them! Keep writing Molly, you are making people think, which is always good
I think the best measure of the effectiveness of a blog are the number of shares it gets, as people that found something useful in it tend to want to share with others.
…I have written quite a bit about this topic and challenge that bloggers face and the bottom line is that you really can’t measure the value. Sure I think asking for responses like you did might help you see a bit of it, but the reality is 99.9% of people will never comment. As such, we as bloggers have to remember that each pageview is a real person who was on our site and who was impacted by what we wrote!
Blogs are probably the best tool for engaging a customer in todays times.

My question: are blogs engaging readers or are they only outreach, even if the blog is read?

P.S. I also got a lot of comments about my analytics post…for next time.

References:

Leonard, A. (2011). Story of Stuff. NY: Free Press. (good book–worth the read)

Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). NY: UN World Commission on Environment and Development. http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf

Gilman, R., Director, Context Institute.

He says: Sustainability is equity over time. As a value, it refers to giving equal weight in your decisions to the future as well as the present. You might think of it as extending the Golden Rule through time, so that you do unto future generations (as well as to your present fellow beings) as you would have them do unto you.

Center for Sustainable Communities is quoted in a variety of places: http://sustainablesonoma.org/keyconcepts/sustainability.html; http://isocs-sustainability.wikispaces.com, among others.

The entire definition is: Sustainability is part of a trend to…consider the whole instead of the specific. Sustainability emphasizes relationships rather than pieces in isolation…Sustainability is not about regressing to primitive living conditions. It is about understanding our situation, and developing as communities in ways that are equitable, and make sense ecologically and economically.

Having just read Harold Jarche’s April 27, 2014 blog, making sense of the network era, about personal knowledge mastery (PKM), I am once again reminded about the challenge of evaluation. I am often asked, “Do you have a form I could use about…?” My nutrition and exercise questions notwithstanding (I do have notebooks of those), this makes evaluation sound like it is routine, standardized, or prepackaged rather than individualized, customized, or specific. For me, evaluation is about the exceptions to the rule; how the evaluation this week may have similarities to something I’ve done before (after all this time, I would hope so…), yet is so different; unique, specific.

You can’t expect to find a pre-made form for your individual program (unless, of course you are replicating a previously established program). Evaluations are unique and the evaluation approach needs to match that unique program specialness. Whether the evaluation uses a survey, a focus group, or an observation (or any other data gathering approach), that approach to gathering data needs to focus on the evaluation question you want answered. You can start with “What difference did the program make?” Only you, the evaluator, can determine if you have enough resources to conduct the evaluation to answer the specific questions that result from what difference did the program make. You probably do not have enough resources to determine if the program led your target audience to world peace; you might have enough resources to determine if the intention to do something different is there. You probably have enough resources to decide how to use your findings. It is so important that the findings be used; use may be how world peace may be accomplished.

There are a few commonalities in data collection; those are the demographics, the data that tell you what your target audience looks like. Things like gender, age, marital status, education level, SES, probably a few other things depending on the program. Make sure when you ask demographic information that a “choose not to answer” option is provided in the survey. Sometimes you have to ask; observations don’t always provide the answer. You need to make sure you include demographics in your survey as most journals want to know what the target audience looked like.

Readers, what makes your evaluations different, unique, special? I’d like to hear about that. Oh and while you are at it…like and share this post, if you do.

My friend, Susan, who promised instructions on how to use Excel to select a sample, wrote a post on that very topic.

She tells me that using screen shots made providing instructions easier so she posted it in a tutorial. Thank you, Susan, for adding this information. Now there is no reason for not selecting a random sample from your large population. Whether the sample will respond or not is out of your control.

Response rates are another thing, to be covered later.

A reader commented that I need to be attending to my analytics not just reading my comments. Hmmm…

My question is: what do analytics tell me about making a difference–by providing an educational forum that changes people am I making a difference? Keep in mind that I am an evaluator and that the root for the word evaluation is “value”. So I wonder, do the analytics tell me about the merit, worth, value of this educational intervention?

What will the analytics really tell me about the readers? What will the comments tell me that the analytics don’t? Will the analytics tell me what difference this blog has made in the readers. Will analytics tell me about intention to change? How will analytics help me write posts to which more people will respond; make me more of an authority in my posting?

I DO NOT KNOW.

If someone, any one out in cyber space knows the answers (readers?), I’d love to hear from you. I blog weekly; sometimes more than weekly (like this week because, although I had the post written, I didn’t get it posted before I left the office so I posted it when I came back). I check my blog regularly for comments. I approve those which provide thoughtful meaningful responses for other readers as well as for me.

Another reader suggests that I look at the number of readers who have established an RSS feed or established a subscription. Hmmm…Not sure what that will tell me. I’ll talk to the IT folks for an answer to that question.

I would certainly appreciate any thoughts from readers.

Evaluation is an Everyday Activity

Program Evaluation Discussions

Category Archives: program evaluation

Blogs are engaging?

Kirkpatrick Model

Virtual impossibility

30 is the rule of thumb…

Survey data

Wednesday’s musings

Sustainability relates to evaluation

Routine vs. Exceptions

Excel and sampling

Making a difference–analytics?

Contact Info