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The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
This course, with its fieldwork component, takes gradual and small steps in grappling with the constituent parts of culture. Taking the notion of self as a center of relationship, we adopt a bottom-up approach in tracing how culture dialectically implicates individual mind and selfhood. Forming several research teams, each group will undertake an empirical studies in designated field sites. Each team, using methodological tools available in visual anthropology and video ethnography (with support from the teaching and technical staff), will be required to relate their research findings to one or more theoretical themes covered in this course.
Free. Available online only.
In 2007, The Evaluation Exchange (XIII, 1) featured the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, a research effort that developed metrics to measure the effectiveness of nonprofit online advocacy and fundraising efforts. Katie Chun of HFRP describes recent releases from this effort and others that help nonprofits assess the success of their online and text-messaging strategies.
Out-of-school time (OST) programs that focus on girls’ involvement in STEM can play an essential role in improving female representation in these traditionally male-dominated fields. OST programs offer girls a non-threatening and non-academic environment for hands-on learning that is collaborative, informal, and personal. However, barriers to quality implementation and outcome-based evaluation present challenges for STEM programs serving girls. This Research Update highlights findings from the evaluations and research studies in the OST Database that focus on STEM programs for girls.
Free. Available online only.
Katie Chun of HFRP discusses the growing momentum and collateral challenges of Facebook as the next major vehicle for nonprofits.
An-Me Chung of the C. S. Mott Foundation describes the Statewide Afterschool Networks, and three Statewide Afterschool Network coordinators—Jennifer Becker Mouhcine from Illinois, Zelda Waymer from South Carolina, and Janet Frieling from Washington—discuss how their Networks support and promote systems of after school program quality.
Amy Aparicio Clark and Amanda Dorris describe how the PALMS Project supports educators’ efforts to engage Latino parents in college preparation and enrollment.
Nancy Clark-Chiarelli from Education Development Center, Inc. describes an evaluation of two approaches to early literacy professional development—one with a traditional face-to-face mode of delivery and one with a technology-enhanced component.
John A. Healy, Director of Strategic Learning and Evaluation at The Atlantic Philanthropies, shares ways to position learning as an organizational priority.
Director of an organizational development consulting practice, professor, and author, Michael Quinn Patton reveals historical and emerging trends in evaluation practice.
Gary Henry makes the case for a paradigm shift in how we think about evaluation use and influence.
Julia Coffman and Marielle Bohan-Baker of HFRP offer ideas for how evaluation can ensure that initiative stakeholders discuss sustainability before it is too late to be useful.
This brief offers lessons and best practices from foundations across the country on grantmaking to school districts. It offers advice to foundations that are considering school district investments for the first time. It also offers a useful "check" to more experienced foundations that want to examine their thinking and approaches against the lessons and practices of other foundations.
Free. Available online only.
A list of useful resources on the Internet.
This paper examines how communication campaigns with different purposes (individual behavior change and policy change) have been evaluated. It offers a discussion of theories of change that can guide evaluation planning, along with five case studies of completed campaign evaluations. Each case study includes lessons from the evaluation and the paper finishes with a set of cross-case-study lessons gleaned from these evaluations and others.
Free. Available online only.
A User's Guide to Advocacy Evaluation Planning was developed for advocates, evaluators, and funders who want guidance on how to evaluate advocacy and policy change efforts. This tool takes users through four basic steps that generate the core elements of an advocacy evaluation plan, including what will be measured and how.
Free. Available online only.
This report presents what has been happening in the field of public communication campaign evaluation in recent years. It examines evaluation challenges, criticisms, and practice and includes sections on relevant theory, outcomes, and useful methods for designing evaluations. It ends with opportunities for the road ahead.
Free. Available online only.
This brief offers a step-by-step approach for developing and using a logic model as a framework for a program or organization’s evaluation. Its purpose is to provide a tool to guide evaluation processes and to facilitate practitioner and evaluator partnerships. The brief is written primarily for program practitioners, but is also relevant and easily applied for evaluators.
Free. Available online only.
Jonny Morell of the Altarum Institute discusses, among other things, the relationship between innovation and efficiency in technology application.
Internationally recognized survey expert Don Dillman discusses the advantages and limitations of conducting surveys via the Internet.
Julia Coffman of HFRP and the Center for Evaluation Innovation describes four approaches to scale that differ on both what is scaled and how it is scaled.
A list of useful resources on the Internet.
Julia Coffman of HFRP describes four ways evaluators may need to adjust their approaches when evaluating advocacy and policy change.
Julia Coffman of HFRP describes one approach OST programs can take to develop a logic model.
Harvard Family Research Project explains how it helps to ground evaluation in theories of the policy process.
Paul Light is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., an instructor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and author of 14 books, including most recently Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence. Previously he was Director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts.