SOCI 4466 PROGRAM & POLICY EVALUATION LECTURE #8 1. Evaluation projects 2. Take-home final 3. Questions?

2. Strategies for Impact Assessment impact: the net effects of a program - the effects that can be uniquely attributed to the program intervention, controlling for the confounding effects of other variables/sources of change impact assessments can be carried out at virtually any stage of the program - piloting, program design, implementation, monitoring, outcome evaluation all impact assessments are comparative - comparing the net effect on those who got the program as compared to some other group - either themselves earlier, a control group, those in an alternative program, etc.

strongest approach to assessing impact is the use of the randomized experimental model Exp -R0X0 Con -R00

pre-requisites for assessing impacts: 1. clearly defined goals and objectives that can be operationalized 2. proper implementation of the intervention note here the considerable difficulties evaluators face in ensuring the above two criteria are met

the three criteria of causality: 1. correlation 2. temporal asymmetry 3. non-spuriousness note the difficulty in demonstrating that a program intervention is the “cause” of a specific outcome - the issue of causation versus correlation - bias in selection of targets - “history” - intervention (Hawthorne) effects - poor measurement

Campbell versus Cronbach: perfect versus good enough impact assessments - lack of experimental control - inability to randomize - “history” - time/money restraints - balancing the importance and impact of the program against practicality gross versus net outcomes Gross= Effects of + Effects of+ Design outcomeintervention other processes Effects (net effect) (extraneous factors)

extraneous confounding factors: - uncontrolled selection (selection bias) - both agency/self selection - “deselection” processes - the drop-out problem - endogenous change (naturally occurring change processes, like healing, learning) - secular drift - interfering effects (history) - maturational and developmental effects

design effects: - stochastic effects: chance fluctuations - the difference between real change and random change - the importance of sampling here, allowing the use of inferential statistics - statistical significance and statistical power: alpha: Type I error (false positive) beta: Type II error (false negative) - significance here of cell sizes and sample size - note differential concern with Type I or II error depending on program type

design effects (continued) - measurement reliability (qualitative/quantitative) - measurement validity (domain, internal consistency, predictive, concurrent) - experimenter/evaluator effects - missing data - sampling biases

choice of outcome measures - back to the measurement model, and reliability and validity - must be feasible to employ, responsive, exhaustive mutually exclusive and, ideally, quantitative - multiple measures best - direct versus indirect

isolating the effects of extraneous factors: - randomized controls - regression-discontinuity controls (pre-determined selection variables) - matched constructed controls - statistically-equated controls - reflexive controls (pre-post) - repeated measures reflexive controls (e.g. panel) - time series reflexive controls - generic controls (established norms, standards)

Full versus partial-coverage programs - if program is delivered to virtually all targets (full coverage), more difficult to find a design to assess impact (e.g. government-funded pension plans; OHIP) - partial coverage programs are not delivered to all targets, so there is opportunity to identify reasonable control/comparison groups

EXHIBIT 7 - F - HERE

judgmental impact assessments: - expert or “connoisseurial” assessments - administrator assessments - participants’ judgments the use of qualitative versus quantitative data

inference validity issues: - reproducibility of the evaluation design + results - generalizability - pooling evaluations - meta analysis