Charles McClintock

Triangulation in Evaluation Design and Analysis Issues

More effective use of mixed-methods evaluation designs employing quantitative and qualitative methods requires clarification of important design and analysis issues. Design needs include assessments of the relative costs and benefits of alternative mixed-methods designs, which can be differentiated by the independence of the different methods and their sequential or concurrent implementation. The evaluation reported herein illustrates an independent, concurrent mixed-method design and highlights its significant triangulation benefits. Strategies for analyzing quantitative and qualitative results are further needed. Underlying this analysis challenge is the issue of cross-paradigm triangulation. A comment on this issue is provided, in conjunction with several triangulation analysis strategies.

Groundwater Protection Benefits and Local Community Planning: Impact of Contingent Valuation Information

Over 50% of the population of the northeastern United States relies on groundwater sources for its drinking water supplies. Groundwater contamination is becoming an important issue. Although considerable literature has built up to aid decision makers in protecting water supplies, (DiNovo and Jaffe; Chanoux), there is little evidence to suggest that local governments have implemented pollution prevention policies aimed directly at protecting groundwater resources (Hennigan 1981; Commonwealth of Massachusetts). This is despite the fact that groundwater is notoriously difficult and expensive to clean up. The federal government lacks the resources and political will to pass national groundwater legislation and has turned the problem of protection over to the states (EPA). Many states, citing the importance of land use controls, have left it to local governments to solve the problem. Despite these difficulties, some communities have managed to implement effective groundwater protection policies. Is it possible to educate communities about contamination

Weeding an Old Garden Toward a New Understanding of Organizational Goals

Currently the conceptual status of organizational goals is uncertain. The organizational goal construct has been the brunt of numerous criticisms and is left out of several major contemporary perspectives on organizations. Building on the insights of the critics of the traditional goal construct, this article argues that goals have an important place in the analysis and management of organizations. Goals are viewed from a behavioral perspective and it is argued that some goal behaviors produce consistency in organizational structure and performance, whereas others lead to variability. A process theory of purposeful variation is presented in which goal behaviors play an important role.

Evaluation of welfare reform. A framework for addressing the urgent and the important.

Assessing the effects of changes still emerging under welfare reform and its overarching policy of devolution presents a challenge to evaluators. Given such features as time limits and benefits caps that vary widely across states and communities, it is necessary not only to attend to urgent issues of immediate relevance for individuals on public assistance but also to focus on important long-term analyses of this complex intergovernmental set of policies. The authors present a conceptual framework based on evaluation utilization and illustrate it with research questions under the rubric of welfare reform. The approach crosses three types of utilization—conceptual, instrumental, and political—with two utilization settings—policy adoption and program imple mentation. Evaluation strategies are linked to the utilization framework and illustrated with examples from studies of welfare reform. In the aggregate, evaluation studies represent a reasonable range of urgent and important issues across most utilization types and settings.

Triangulation in practice

Abstract An evaluation study was designed using a between-method triangulation strategy. Two study teams gathered and analyzed data about the effectiveness of a formal process for long range program planning. One team used a mail questionnaire and the other, on-site open-ended interviews. Initial plans for coordination between the two teams were misguided and, fortunately, were subverted during data collection and analysis. The evaluation strategy and its derailment are discussed in terms of the purposes of triangulation and the forces that work against sensible intentions for coordination in multimethod studies.

Creating Communities of Practice for Experiential Learning in Policy Studies

Educating students for social policy and management roles in the twenty-first century requires attention to a wide range of challenges in higher education. These include integrating classroom and field study, balancing a liberal arts education for breadth and perspective with pre-professional specialization for immediate postgraduate demands, understanding the interplay between scientific and social bases of knowledge, and joining the goals of diversity—from intellectual and moral perspectives to human attributes and social groups—with communal values and commitments. The difficulty of these challenges notwithstanding, it is an exciting time for social policy education given that the significant changes underway in social welfare, health, and education create enormous opportunities to engage students in field study and research (McClintock & Beck, 1998; McClintock & Colosi, 1998).

Policy Seminars for State and Community Leaders

Spanning the campus-community boundary is one of the most challenging tasks for academia, and it is crucial over the long run to the evolving role of the professoriate in the scholarship of application, the financial health of academia, and the contribution of higher education to a broadly defined vision of societal well-being (Feller, 1986; Wolshok, 1995). One form of this campus-community connection is the policy seminar in which research findings are brought to bear on issues of immediate concern to legislative and agency audiences (Lewis & Ellefson, 1996). This chapter tells a story in progress about a policy seminar sponsored by Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology that is building a sustained partnership among academia, government and community participants at state and local levels. The story has important successes to date as well as unmet challenges.

Administrators as information brokers: A managerial perspective on naturalistic evaluation

Abstract The managerial perspective on justifying conclusions from naturalistic evaluation is based on how administrators function as brokers who exchange, highlight, and interpret information for others. Information brokering is particularly important within a cognitive perspective on organizations, and consists of process and outcome dimensions. Brokering processes include using evaluative information for conceptualizing, motivating action, and monitoring performance. Brokering outcomes refer to conceptual, instrumental, and symbolic results of information use. The combination of these dimensions results in a variety of substantive and methodological criteria that administrators might use to justify knowledge claims from program evaluation.

Implementing Public Policy Education: The Role of the School or College

What is the role of the school or college within the larger university setting in implementing policy studies in applied developmental science? The answer to this question largely depends on whether academic critical mass lies within or across college boundaries, and if within, determining whether it cuts across departmental lines. Critical mass refers to the depth of expertise in public policy analysis and program management among the disciplines and fields of developmental science.

Internal Evaluation: The New Challenge:

evaluation&dquo; is used here to describe appraisal and analysis activities of programmatic or administrative operations that are done for managers in their immediate organizational contexts in the profit, private nonprofit, and public sectors. Internal evaluation as primarily a formative activity is also meant to contrast with larger-scale multisite program policy evaluations that have held center stage in the evaluation