The book demystifies evaluation for the social service professional and student. The authors explain the uses and benefits of evaluation, the terminology and research methods used, and indeed the problems and limitations of evaluation. The last chapter is devoted to implementing evaluation results. It discusses the problems one is likely to encounter, and the ways to define improvement projects using the new information. An appendix of programme evaluation cases and exercises at the end of each chapter help readers to check their own comprehension and relate it to particular circumstances.
A practical guide for human service workers and students which describes and shows techniques for use in assessing families. The author reviews a conceptual basis of family assessment in chapters that focus on the family as a system, the family and its environment, and the family life cycle. She goes on to describe such methods of assessment as the ecomap, the genogram, family sculpture, and the use of observation and checklists. Throughout the guide, case examples are used to illustrate concepts and show the techniques in use. A special feature of particular value is the self-teaching exercises designed to give the reader practice in applying these ideas and methods. A concluding chapter relates family assessment to treatment or intervention.
Research is often seen as a neutral, technical process through which researchers simply reveal or discover knowledge. A broader and more self-reflective stance is advocated in Beyond Method, one in which a knowledge of technique needs to be complemented by an appreciation of the nature of research as a distinctively human process, through which researchers make knowledge. Such an appreciation requires a reframing of understanding and debate about research, in a way that goes beyond considerations of method alone.
This is the first introduction to an area of research which has grown up in recent years, and which has begun to answer Lethaby's call of nearly seventy years ago for a programme of theoretical work on the geometry of architectural plans. The work attempts to show how, given suitable geometric definitions of certain classes of plans, systematic ......
A substantially revised and updated edition of an earlier volume in the series. Asher presents a number of techniques of causal modelling, beginning with the work of Simon and Blalock, and moving on to recursive and non-recursive path estimation. Special attention is given to a number of problems in the causal analysis of data, with illustrations from studies in political socialization and voting behaviour.
A step-by-step guide through the process of programme evaluation which takes into account all the evaluator's roles -- not just as researcher, but as negotiator, administrator and organizer, writer, and communicator. Kosekoff and Fink offer some of the techniques that have proven useful in their own professional evaluation practice. They show how to appraise a programme's merit, and provide information about its goals, expectations, outcomes, impact and costs.
