Tag Archives: evaluation reporting

Long-term effects; what to do with them and without them

Greetings, genuwiners! Thought I’d toss a small puzzle into the stream of discussions to start my visit. Ideally, almost all program evaluations need to include a long term follow up, but almost none of the clients can wait for long-term … Continue reading

Posted in Adequate scope, Appropriate inference, Health | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Why genuine evaluation must include causal inference

Is it OK to just document whatever changes happen to people over the life of the program and summarize these in an evaluation report under a heading called “Outcomes”? What if you point out in a disclaimer that you haven’t got any evidence that the program contributed to them? What if you don’t exactly call them “outcomes”? What if it’s just a low-budget evaluation? Answers: No, no, no, and NO! Here’s why … Continue reading

Posted in Causal inference, Causal inference strategies | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t drop the ball: Five key messages for getting to a ‘good’ evaluation

What does it take to get a ‘good’ evaluation? What’s suggested here are five core evaluation components that commissioners of evaluation might focus on to improve the likelihood of getting a good evaluation. Continue reading

Posted in Evaluative questions & answers | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Friday Funny: Media representation of results …

A spot of evaluation humor (in the form of a cartoon) to follow up on recent posts about media misreporting of evaluation concepts and findings … Continue reading

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The media and evaluation reporting – clueless or unscrupulous?

Most lay people can grasp the difference between grading/rating and ranking, so what’s wrong with the media? Following on from Patricia Rogers’ recent posts about the misreporting of evaluation findings, this post looks at an example from the New Zealand media (reporting on the new National Standards for literacy and numeracy) of leading the public astray with a complete lack of understanding of this very fundamental evaluation concept. Jane also ponders the reasons why the mainstream media in particular gets this kind of thing wrong so often … Continue reading

Posted in Appropriate reporting, Education | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments