Fundamentals of Evaluation Research in Vocational Rehabilitation

摘要

This self - instruction manual is designed to introduce program evaluation concepts and terminology to beginning program evaluators. The emphases and applications are in the context of the State - Federal vocational rehabilitation program. The focus is toward a research approach to program evaluation. Reasons for, and general approaches to, program evaluation are presented. Sources of potential resistance to efforts of program evaluators and suggested approaches for avoiding such resistance are offered. The text introduces readers to the scientific method as it applies to the problems of program evaluation. A section on sampling provides definitions and descriptions of various sampling techniques. A section on measurement, reliability, validity, and basic psychometric statistics defines different levels of measurement and introduces the concepts of percentile ranks, and histogram and frequency distribution. The various types of data in vocational rehabilitation that are available to program evaluators are discussed. Finally, evaluation designs and data analysis techniques are detailed in a section covering both traditional and alternative evaluation designs. The manual describes the use of the confidence interval on a mean, presents ways of testing for differences in means, and discusses the sign test, Chi - square tests, the language of data processing, and considerations in presentation of evaluative research results. The text is designed in a looseleaf format. Each module is followed by review exercises and a list of references. Charts and tables illustrate the text, and a list of general reference works on evaluation research is appended. (Author abstract modified).