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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 web only version of the New & Noteworthy section features an expanded annotated list of papers, organizations, initiatives, and other resources related to the issue's theme of Democratic Evaluation.
Kathleen McCartney and Heather Weiss of the Harvard Graduate School of Education describe the conditions for evaluations to maintain scientific integrity and serve the public good despite a politicized environment.
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange periodical focuses on democratic evaluation. At the forefront of the discussion are equity and inclusion in the evaluation of programs for children, families, and communities, as well as evaluation to promote public accountability and transparency. Katherine Ryan leads off the issue by presenting major theoretical approaches to democratic evaluation. Several contributors examine these different strands, highlighting the importance of power sharing. Jennifer Greene emphasizes the importance of broad inclusion of stakeholder perspectives in evaluations, while Saville Kushner offers guidelines for people and communities to help evaluation reposition itself as a collaborative effort and thereby begin to address the crisis in public trust between the professional bureaucracy and citizens. Kathleen McCartney and Heather Weiss focus on public accountability, especially the conduct of flagship evaluations to maintain their scientific integrity while also serving the public good. Several contributors provide practical methods and tools to promote democratic evaluation, including the facilitation of dialogue, the training of youth researchers, the use of photovoice and cell phone technology, and access to interactive information through the Internet.
Free. 20 Pages.
Tim Ross, Research Director at the Vera Institute of Justice, explains Vera's rigorous and multitiered data collection process and the benefits of partnerships with public programs.
Dennis Arroyo describes the performance-monitoring mechanisms that nongovernment agencies use to make public officials accountable to citizens.
Ernest House, Emeritus Professor at the University of Colorado, argues that democratic evaluation calls for more ingenuity than other forms of evaluation and that as a result its methods can take many forms.
Anju Malhotra and Sanyukta Mathur from the International Center for Research on Women describe a study in Nepal that compared participatory and more traditional approaches to evaluating adolescent reproductive health interventions.
This book of research-based teaching cases and theoretical perspectives focuses on dilemmas in family-school-community relationships.
This presentation, Supporting Children's Development in and out of the Classroom, examined parenting behaviors and their associations with one another and with children's outcomes in early and late adolescence.
Free. Available online only.
Heather Weiss and M. Elena Lopez of Harvard Family Research Project sent the following letter in response to the Los Angeles Times article “Parents’ Involvement Not Key to Student Progress, Study Finds,” published on October 26, 2005.
Free. Available online only.
In this presentation, Engaging Adolescents in Out-of-School Time Programs: Learning What Works, Priscilla Little reported on the benefits of participation in out-of-school time activities, contextual predictors of youth participation in such activities, and strategies for improving recruitment and retention in out-of-school time programs. Remarks were presented at a session on engaging adolescents in out-of-school time programs at the American Youth Policy Forum in Washington, D.C., on October 7, 2005.
Free. Available online only.
This study shows how families of students with disabilities are involved in their children’s education both at home and school, and how characteristics of children and families are related to families’ level of participation.
Free. Available online only.
Second grade teacher Nikki believes that participation in a formal after school program would help her student Cindy academically at school. However, Cindy's single working mother Marla prefers to keep Cindy with her in the afternoons after her numerous struggles with securing quality affordable care in the community. What are the roles of family, school, and community in promoting children's learning and development in out-of-school time?
Free. Available online only.
Family-centered practices by professionals serving families and their young children with disabilities have become a cornerstone of personnel preparation programs in early childhood intervention (ECI) and early childhood education. Our research project sought to develop a measure to examine the family-centered beliefs, skills, work systems, and work practices of ECI and ECE graduate students.
Free. Available online only.
This 2-day meeting brought together the perspectives of diverse stakeholders to inspire new ideas and foster stronger links between research, practice, and policy. Participants discussed issues of access, quality, professional development, the role of evaluation research, and systems-building efforts.
Free. Available online only.
Andrea Anderson is a research associate at the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change, where she focuses on work related to planning and evaluating community initiatives.
Gary Henry makes the case for a paradigm shift in how we think about evaluation use and influence.
Patricia Rogers of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology describes how a theory of change can provide coherence in evaluating national initiatives that are both complicated and complex.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Wellsys Corporation describe how they plan to aggregate lessons learned across a "thematic cluster" of youth development investments.
Teresa Boyd Cowles of the Connecticut Department of Education offers self-reflective strategies evaluators can use to enhance their multicultural competency.
Mehmet Öztürk discusses findings from a review of evaluations of programs at selective colleges and universities to be used for improving undergraduate academic outcomes for underrepresented minority or disadvantaged students.
Rodney Hopson and Prisca Collins of Duquesne University describe a new graduate internship program designed to develop leaders in the evaluation field and improve evaluators' capacity to work responsively in diverse racial and ethnic communities.
Theodore Lamb, of the Center for Research and Evaluation at Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, discusses retrospective pretests and their strengths and weaknesses.
The New & Noteworthy section features an annotated list of papers, organizations, initiatives, and other resources related to the issue's theme of Evaluation Methodology.
An introduction to the issue on Evaluation Methodology by HFRP's Founder & Director, Heather B. Weiss, Ed.D.