Main description:

This book is an accessible, contemporary, and comprehensive guide to the concepts and practice of evaluation. Authors Gail Vallance Barrington and Beverly Triana-Tremain integrate new approaches and concerns, and classic frameworks with practical tools that readers can use to design evaluation studies. They show how evaluators measure whether the planned and implemented interventions or services are achieving their goals and objectives, while focusing on the questions most important to the community and organizations in which the evaluation takes place. The book stresses the role of critical and evaluative thinking, as well as self-reflection, and demonstrates the importance of context and equity in today's turbulent environment, offering a new stance for evaluators to support global as well as local issues.

Contents:

Part 1 Fundamentals of Evaluation
Chapter 1 The Scope of Evaluation
Chapter 2 How Evaluators Think
Chapter 3 Program Logic
Part 2 Evaluation and the Program Life Cycle
Chapter 4 Pre- and Early Program Evaluation
Chapter 5 Mid-Cycle Program Evaluation
Chapter 6 End of Cycle Program Evaluation
Part 3 Evaluation Methods
Chapter 7 Using Quantitative Methods in Evaluation
Chapter 8 Using Qualitative Methods in Evaluation
Chapter 9 Using Mixed Methods in Evaluation
Part 4 Communicating about Evaluation
Chapter 10 The Evaluation Plan
Chapter 11 Communication, Reporting, and Use
Chapter 12 Evaluation Context and the Evaluator's New Stance