Joseph S. Wholey

Formative and summative evaluation: Related issues in performance measurement

Abstract Wholey first defines “performance measurement” and then explains how it can serve both formative and summative evaluation functions. He also offers the view that formative evaluation is typically more useful than summative for governmental purposes, and that performance measurement is more useful than one-shot evaluations (of either formative or summative stripe). Challenges to evaluators wishing to contribute to performance measurement methodology are outlined.

Evaluability Assessment: From Theory to Practice in the Department of Health and Human Services

A common criticism of evaluation is that it is ineffectual. Policy makers, program managers, and evaluators frequently complain that evaluation does not answer the right questions, is not timely, or is irrelevant to their information needs. In a 1974 PAR symposium on program evaluation, Horst and her colleagues from the Urban Institute assessed some of the reasons generally given for the failure of evaluation to affect program performance. They concluded that the poor utilization of evaluation and evaluations lack of contribution to improved program performance appeared to result from:

Managing for High Performance: The Role of Evaluation:

course. Perhaps my World War II generation got in the habit of taking too many risks, of letting success tempt us into hubris. We certainly took too many risks in the sixties, at home and abroad. But I am convinced that we now are again taking too few-especially risks of action rather than inaction. Do we professionals weigh the risks and probabilities of doing nothing as carefully as the risks of doing something? In health cost containment? In tax policy? In arms control? In any other important area of our national life? I don’t think we do, and we should, indeed we must. There is no free lunch and there is no riskless endeavor, but we must eat, mustn’t we? And if we are to be successful in our chosen ventures, I suggest that strategy is more important than and subsumes tactics and techniques, that when one is taking risks he needs enough flexibility and discretion to cope with uncertainty. The accountability has to go largely to outcomes rather than to process if there is to be any real chance of

The New Equation at OMB: M + B = RMO

No abstract available.

Developing an Evaluation Design for the Senior Executive Service

In 1979, the Office of Personnel Management requested that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, then the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare) plan an evaluation study to assess the impact of the Senior Executive Service (SES) on the department. An evaluability assess ment was conducted which produced an agreed-upon model of the SES program design and a clear basis for a longitudinal evaluation study. This paper summarizes the conclusions of the HHS/SES evaluability assessment.