"Program evaluation is a systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to answer questions about projects, policies and programs, particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency."
This topic covers the principles and methods of designing and evaluating social welfare programs and services, including needs assessment, program design, implementation, and evaluation. It also includes information on how to use program evaluation to improve social welfare outcomes.
Program Design: The process of planning, creating, and implementing a program to achieve a specific objective.
Logic Models: A visual representation of a program that outlines its goals, inputs, outputs, and outcomes.
Needs Assessments: An evaluation of the social problem that a program aims to address.
Performance Monitoring: Continuous tracking of a program's performance over time to identify areas for improvement.
Data Collection: The process of gathering and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate a program.
Outcome Evaluation: An analysis of the effectiveness of a program in achieving its intended outcomes.
Impact Evaluation: An analysis of the broader social and economic impacts of a program.
Cost-Benefit Analysis: An assessment of the costs and benefits of a program to determine its overall value.
Program Sustainability: The long-term viability of a program beyond its initial funding.
Program Dissemination: The process of communicating program findings to stakeholders and the wider community.
Needs Assessment: This type of program evaluation aims to identify the needs of a target community or population. The focus is to collect data to identify the problem that needs to be addressed through social welfare programs.
Outcome Evaluation: This type of program evaluation examines the effectiveness of a program in achieving the desired outcomes. The focus is on measurable and observable changes in target individuals or population.
Formative Evaluation: This type of program evaluation focuses on program implementation and makes changes to design, program, and implementation as required. The focus is on improving the quality of the intervention before it is fully implemented.
Summative Evaluation: This type of program evaluation assesses the overall impact of a program, often done at the end of a program cycle, comparing project results with intended objectives.
Impact Evaluation: This type of program evaluation determines the program’s overall impact on the community or population served, focusing on the social change and long-term effects.
Process Evaluation: This type of program evaluation examines the implementation and execution of a program's daily operations, ensuring program quality & fidelity.
Cost Analysis: Program cost is analyzed in terms of both monetary and non-monetary (e.g., wasted time, negative impact on service delivery) resources expended to achieve program objectives.
Program Theory: Program theory is a causal reasoning structure that explains why a program works, including the assumptions and evidence about the program's operations, inputs, outputs, and outcomes.
Responsive Evaluation: This type of program evaluation encompasses active learning and honing program approaches as any new findings or problems arise, for the sake of continual improvement.
"To some degree, program evaluation falls under traditional cost–benefit analysis, concerning fair returns on the outlay of economic and other assets; however, social outcomes can be more complex to assess than market outcomes, and a different skillset is required."
"Considerations include how much the program costs per participant, program impact, how the program could be improved, whether there are better alternatives, if there are unforeseen consequences, and whether the program goals are appropriate and useful."
"Best practice is for the evaluation to be a joint project between evaluators and stakeholders."
"A wide range of different titles are applied to program evaluators... Program Analysts, Program Assistants, Program Clerks (United Kingdom), Program Support Specialists, or Program Associates, Program Coordinators."
"Evaluation became particularly relevant in the U.S. in the 1960s during the period of the Great Society social programs associated with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations."
"Extraordinary sums were invested in social programs, but the impacts of these investments were largely unknown."
"People who do program evaluation come from many different backgrounds, such as sociology, psychology, economics, social work, as well as political science subfields such as public policy and public administration."
"Some universities also have specific training programs, especially at the postgraduate level in program evaluation, for those who studied an undergraduate subject area lacking in program evaluation skills."
"Program evaluations can involve both quantitative and qualitative methods of social research."
"Stakeholders might be required to assess—under law or charter—or want to know whether the programs they are funding, implementing, voting for, receiving or opposing are producing the promised effect."
"Evaluators help to answer these questions."
"The process of evaluation is considered to be a relatively recent phenomenon. However, planned social evaluation has been documented as dating as far back as 2200 BC."
"...to answer questions about projects, policies and programs, particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency."
"Social outcomes can be more complex to assess than market outcomes, and a different skillset is required."
"...how the program could be improved, whether there are better alternatives..."
"Considerations include how much the program costs per participant... concerning fair returns on the outlay of economic and other assets."
"If there are unforeseen consequences..."
"Best practice is for the evaluation to be a joint project between evaluators and stakeholders."
"...whether the program goals are appropriate and useful."