Improving Evaluation of Anticrime Programs (2005) / Chapter Skim
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2 What Questions Should the Evaluation Address?
2 What Questions Should the Evaluation Address?
Pages 14-21
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From page 14... ...
Still others, such as intensive probation supervision, arise from the challenges of everyday criminal justice practice. Our concern in this report is not with the origins of criminal justice programs but with their evaluation when questions about their effectiveness arise among policy makers, practitioners, funders, or sponsors of evaluation research.
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From page 15... ...
Assessment of program implementation, often called process evaluation, is a core evaluation function aimed at determining how well the program is operating, especially whether it is actually delivering enough of the intervention to have a reasonable chance of producing effects. With a program for counseling victims of domestic violence, for example, an evaluation might consider the number of eligible victims who participate, attendance at the counseling sessions, and the quality of the counseling provided.
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From page 16... ...
In criminal justice contexts, the organizational and administrative demands associated with delivering program services of sufficient quality, quantity, and scope to bring about meaningful change are considerable. Offenders often resist or manipulate programs, victims may feel threatened and distrustful, legal and administrative factors constrain program activities, and crime, by its nature, is difficult to control.
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From page 17... ...
Thus this form of evaluation will be tailored to the program being evaluated and will show little commonality across programs that are not replicates of each other. Process evaluations may assess program performance at one point in time or be configured to produce periodic reports on program performance, generally referred to as "performance monitoring." In the latter case, the procedures for collecting and reporting data on performance indicators are often designed by an evaluation specialist but then routinized in the program as a management information system (MIS)
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From page 18... ...
Performance Monitoring A continuous process evaluation that produces periodic reports on the program's performance on a designated set of indicators and is often incor porated into program routines as a form of management information sys tem. It may include monitoring of program outcome indicators but does not address the program impact on those outcomes.
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From page 19... ...
For present purposes, we will focus on broader considerations that apply across the range of criminal justice impact evaluations. EVALUATION MUST OFTEN BE PROGRAMMATIC Determining the priority evaluation questions for a program or group of programs may itself require some investigation into the program circumstances, stakeholder concerns, utility of the expected information, and the like.
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From page 20... ...
Its purpose is to inform decisions about whether an evaluation should be undertaken and, if so, what form it should take. For an agency wishing to plan and commission an evaluation, especially of a large, complex, or diffuse program, a preliminary evaluability assessment can provide background information useful for defining what questions the evaluation should address, what form it should take, and what resources will be required to successfully complete it.
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From page 21... ...
It may also require the capability to conduct or commission preliminary studies to provide input to the process. Such studies might include surveys of programs and policy makers to identify issues and potential sites, feasibility studies to determine if it is likely that certain questions can be answered, and evaluability assessments that examine the readiness and appropriateness of evaluation for candidate programs.
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