Evaluators have always worked in diverse communities, and the programs they evaluate are designed to address often intractable socio-political and economic issues. Evaluations that explicitly aim to be more responsive to culture and cultural context are, however, a more recent phenomenon. This book utilizes a conceptual framework that foregrounds culture in social inquiry, and then uses that framework to analyze empirical studies across three distinct cultural domains of evaluation practice (Western, Indigenous and international development). The authors provide a comparative analysis of these studies and discuss lessons drawn from them in order to help evaluators extend their current thinking and practice. They conclude with an agenda for future research.
The concepts of cause and effect are critical to the field of program evaluation. Experimentally-designed evaluations-those that randomize to treatment and control groups-offer a convincing means for establishing a causal connection between a program and its effects. This book considers a range of impact evaluation questions, particularly those questions that focus on the impact of specific aspects of a program. Laura R. Peck shows how a variety of experimental evaluation design options can provide answers to these questions, and she suggests opportunities for experiments to be applied in more varied settings and focused on program improvement efforts.
The text is grounded in high impact teaching, including peer-to-peer and project-based learning. Such practices are widely supported as being useful for student success, particularly for under-prepared and disadvantaged students. The text is methodological in nature, not scholarship-oriented. It does draw the majority of its examples from the authors' scholarship in anthropology.
Exploring every stage of the organization development process, in his new edition Donald L. Anderson includes new strategies for change such as appreciative inquiry, world cafe, and open space. Emphasizing organization development ethics and values in each chapter, the text provides real-world applications and equips students with the tools necessary to thrive in today's challenging business environment. The new edition features: Expanded coverage of whole organization and multiple-organization interventions, now explored in two chapters, examine large-scale interventions such as culture assessment and change, organization design and structure, and mergers and acquisitions. New discussion questions, exercises, activities, and role-plays allow students to apply and practice OD concepts. New coverage of dialogic approaches to OD (Chapter 13) unpack new strategies like appreciative inquiry, world cafe, and open space. New examples of global organization development (Chapter 15) help students develop a global perspective of OD. Updated and expanded Instructor Resources include a test bank, PowerPoint presentations, and video resources.
A workbook built for application, Doing Ethnographic Research prepares your students to become effective ethnographic researchers. With activities to practice and reinforce each step of the research process, this book serves as the perfect compliment to the text, Introduction to Ethnographic Research, also written by the same authors.
The book brings together material on the analysis of limited and bounded variables that is scattered across the literature in several disciplines, and presents it in a style that is both more accessible and up-to-date. The authors provide worked examples in each chapter using real datasets from a variety of disciplines. The software used for the examples include R, SAS, and Stata. The data, software code, and detailed explanations of the example models are available on an accompanying website.
A firm knowledge of factor analysis is key to understanding much published research in the social and behavioral sciences. This volume provides a solid foundation in exploratory factor analysis (EFA), which along with confirmatory factor analysis, represents one of the two major strands in this field. The book lays out the mathematical foundations of EFA; explores the range of methods for extracting the initial factor structure; explains factor rotation; and outlines the methods for determining the number of factors to retain in EFA. The concluding chapter addresses a number of other key issues in EFA, such as determining the appropriate sample size for a given research problem, and the handling of missing data. It also offers brief introductions to exploratory structural equation modeling, and multilevel models for EFA. Example computer code, and the annotated output for all of the examples included in the text are available on an accompanying website.
The cases in this book offer insights about the practice of needs assessment in dynamic, real-world organizations and communities. This book invites both novice and seasoned analysts to look over the shoulders of practitioners, to examine needs assessment practice in action, to grasp the real-world issues that arise, and to understand a variety of needs assessment strategies and challenges. Each case in this book examines the implementation of needs assessment in a specific situation, bridging needs assessment theories and actual practice. The book is organized around five major approaches: knowledge and skill assessment, job and task analysis, competency assessment, strategic needs assessment, and complex needs assessment. The last chapter summarizes lessons learned from all the case studies: it describes the insights and tricks of the trade that the book's editors gained from commissioning and reviewing these cases.
Authors Richard M. Hough and Kimberly D. McCorkle employ more than 30 years of academic and practitioner experience to help explain why and how people kill and how society reacts. This brief, yet comprehensive text takes a balanced approach, combining scholarly research and theory with compelling details about recent cases and coverage of current trends.
