Programs, policies, and evaluations What is evaluation reserch? A brief history of evaluation reserch An overview of program evaluation Evaluation reserch in practice Who can do evaluations? Tailoring evaluations What aspects of the evaluation plan must be tailored? What considerations should guide evaluation planning? The nature of the evaluator stakeholder relationship Evaluation questions and evaluation methods stiching it all together Identifying issues formulating questions What makes a good evaluation question? Determining the questions on which the evaluation should focus Collacting evaluation questions and setting priorities Assessing the need for a program The role of evaluators in diagnosing social conditions and service needs Defining social problems Specifying the extent of the problem: when, where, and how big? Defining and identifying the targets of interventions Describing the nature of service needs Expressing and assessing program theory The evaluability assessment perspective Eliciting and expressing program theory Assessing program theory Monitoring program process and performance What is program monitoring? Monitoring service utilization Monitoring organizational functions Monitoring program outcomes Collecting data for monitoring Analysis of monitoring data Strategies for impact assessment Key concepts in impact assessment Extraneous confounding factors design effects Design strategies for isolating the effects of extraneous factors A catalog of impact assessment designs Judgmental approaches to impact assessment Quantitative versus qualitative data in impact assessments Inference validity issues in impact assessment Choosing the right impact assessment strategy randomized designs for impact assessment Units of analysis experiments as an impact assessment strategy Analyzing randomized experiments Limitations on the use of randomized experiments Quasi-experiemental impact assessments Quasi-experiemental impact assessment Constructing comparison groups in quasi-experimental evaluations Some cautions in using constructed controls Assessment of full-coverage programs Nonuniform full-coverage programs reflexive controls Shadow controls Measuring efficiency Key concepts in efficiency analysis Methodology of cost benefit analysis Cost-effectiveness analysis The social context of evaluation The purposefulness of evaluation activities The social ecology of evaluations The profession of evaluation evaluation standards, guidelines, and ethics Utilization of evaluation results