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Recent Posts
- Evaluation of marketing – grappling with the important but hard to measure outcomes
- The Friday Funny: A surrealistic mega-analysis of redisorganization theories
- Getting the facts straight on youth unemployment rates
- The Friday Funny: Negotiating the budget
- The Friday Funny: Evaluation and content expertise
Recent Comments
- Michael Scriven on Evaluation of marketing – grappling with the important but hard to measure outcomes
- Kathleen Lynch on The Friday Funny: Negotiating the budget
- Heather Nunns on Friday Funny – 10 ways of knowing you’ve been an evaluator too long
- Tarina MacDonald on 9 golden rules for commissioning a waste-of-money evaluation
- Tarina MacDonald on Valuing cultural expertise – in $$ terms
Archives
Tag Archives: measurement
What you measure and how you measure it – the Greek financial example
A salutary reminder that just because things are measured precisely (such as money) doesn’t mean that the measurements are valid or useful. As reported by Louise Story, Landon Thomas Jr and Nelson D. Schwartz, in the New York Times on … Continue reading
The Impact-o-meter
Is certainty of measurement the most important criterion for impact evaluation? Colin Burrows has set forward a tongue-in-cheek proposal for measuring the impact of research undertaken in universities – the Impact-o-meter. This satirical piece raises serious questions about the cost, … Continue reading
Posted in Appropriate measurement, Education, Friday Funnies, Uncategorized
Tagged measurement
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Does regression to the mean explain successful diet programs?
We might remember ‘regression to the mean‘ from those lists of threats to validity (in terms of causal analysis). But when is it actually likely to be a problem for genuine evaluation? In a recent post by Rebecca Goldin on … Continue reading
Posted in Appropriate measurement, Health
Tagged analysis, BMI, measurement, obesity, regression to the mean, reliability, statistics
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Critiquing a partial evaluation – is a half-full glass better or worse than no drink at all?
Where do you draw the balance? Should we stop doing small evaluations that only look at a few pieces of data, to avoid the risk of misinterpretation? Or should we work harder to ensure their findings can be appropriately incorporated … Continue reading
Why genuine evaluation must be value-based
Every now and then the question is raised about whether evaluation really needs to incorporate “values”. Can’t we just measure what needs to be measured, talk to the right people, pass on whatever they (the people and the data) say? Why is there a need to dig into the messiness of “value”? Do we really need to say anything about how “substantial” or “valuable” an outcome is in the scheme of things, whether an identified weakness is minor or serious, whether implementation has been botched or aced, whether the entire program is heinously expensive or an incredible bargain given what it achieves? Do we really need to do anything seriously evaluative in our evaluation work? Yes, we do. And here’s why … Continue reading
Jane at Real Evaluation
Patricia at CIRCLE (RMIT)