Robert E. Brown

An Integral Approach to Evaluating Outcome Evaluation Training

Public and private nonprofit organizations are increasing training efforts to build individual and organizational capacity to carry out and utilize outcome evaluation. Evaluators of training are challenged to find comprehensive evaluative frameworks. Traditional training evaluation tend to focus individual change, while organization-focused efforts tend to incorporate individual change as a necessary sub-component of the larger entity’s change. Neither approach adequately incorporates a developmental context within the evaluative framework. This article presents an integral, developmental approach that links individual and collective attributes. The use of the framework is illustrated with examples from Check Points, an outcome evaluation training program of Michigan State University and United Way of Michigan. The article concludes with suggestions for improving training and evaluative efforts.

Checkpoints: Building Capacity to Enhance Program Impact Through Evaluation

American society is faced with pervasive problems confronting individuals, families, and communities. Issues of child and youth development, of economic competitiveness, of environmental quality, of violence and crime, and of health and health care, require creative solutions and the design, deployment, and evaluation of innovative public policies and intervention programs. There is increasing pressure for universities to take an active role in the development of innovative solutions to these societal problems. Michigan State University has responded to such pressures to design and deliver knowledge applications, in part, through its Applied Developmental Science Program (Fitzgerald, Abrams, Church, Votruba, & Imig, 1996; Lerner, Lerner, Nguyen, Pease, Reiling, Firlan, White, & Freel, 1994). The overarching goal of the ADS Program is to establish university-community partnerships that focus on resolution of community-defined problems.