Peter J. Gray

Microcomputers in evaluation

Microcomputer! The very word causes both fear and longing in the heart of the most seasoned evaluator. At Evaluation ’83 nearly 10 % of the sessions and the ENet President’s Problem dealt explicitly with microcomputer technology and evaluation. These sessions attempted to dispel the fear and to focus the longing of evaluators. Two general themes emerged from the sessions scattered throughout the conference. One was that microcomputers provide a powerful tool for the conduct of evaluation research. The other was that microcom-

Microcomputers in Evaluation The New Generation of Computers

The major characteristics of microcomputer technology that make it so useful for evaluation research are its functionality, speed, and accessbility. Functionality concerns the variety and sophistication of microcomputer software and hardware features. Speed concerns the time it takes for software and hardware to perform the operations related to their features. Accessibility is the extent to which functionality and speed are available to the individual user. Accessibility depends on (1) the price/ performance ratio, that is, the cost of each unit of functionality and speed, and (2) ease of use, that is, the extent to which the interaction between person and machine is intuitive. Improvements in microcomputer hardware have a major impact on the functionality, speed, and accessibility of microcomputer technology. Hardware includes the following electronic and mechanical components of a microcomputer system:

Microcomputers in Evaluation Desktop Publishing

After struggling for weeks, months, or years on an evaluation, each evaluator wants to make the best possible presentation of his or her work. This includes the physical appearance of text, tables, and graphs in proposals, project brochures, progress reports, newsletters, survey instruments, and final reports, papers, and articles. Standard word processing programs give some control over page format and layout and a great deal of assistance in editing written text. Teaming a good word processing program with a letter-quality printer can create an attractive