Evaluation of students is an integral part of teaching and instruction. Evaluations take on added dimensions when students are enrolled in healthcare training programs, such as nurse anesthesia. Not only must students master a body of knowledge, but they also must be able to integrate, process, and apply this knowledge ...

Over the past few years and for a variety or reasons, consumers/survivors in the Niagara Region have indicated that an alternative to hospitalization is needed. This paper describes the community-development process which led to the creation of a crisis-response system consisting of Community Crisis Care (CCC) and a Safe Beds ...

This paper presents a framework for the evaluation of activities and programs with harm-reduction objectives that draws attention to the logic, implementation, outcomes, costs, and cost-effectiveness of these initiatives and encompasses stakeholder concerns and theoretical models. Evaluations of harm-reduction initiatives are essential if their proponents wish to establish them as ...

In the paper we describe the function of the ExaMe program that serves for evaluation of students knowledge using Internet. Evaluation is based on the knowledge base of a given course. Two types of evaluation tests are described. The fixed test is appropriate for examination of students by the teacher ...

This paper includes the authors' review of the outcome evaluation articles of federal and non-federal training programs to prepare minority/disadvantaged students for entry into health programs as managers and practitioners. It provides information from the senior author's 1987-1993 Health Careers Opportunity Program grant for comparison purposes. The paper makes an ...

Various challenges exist when evaluating statewide, community-based public health initiatives and these need to be addressed by tobacco control programs. There are factors inherent in public health initiatives that can make it difficult to assess causality and effectiveness. These include initial design elements, funding mandates, duration of program and resources ...

Clinical evaluation in nursing education is an important activity with potentially serious implications for students, teachers, and the recipients of nursing care. The evaluation of student learning in the clinical area has been the focus of much effort and energy as educators struggle with issues arising from the subjective nature ...

The practice of health education involves three major program-planning activities: needs assessment, program development, and evaluation. Over the past 20 years, significant enhancements have been made to the conceptual base and practice of health education. Models that outline explicit procedures and detailed conceptualization of community assessment and evaluation have been ...

Assessing the effects of changes still emerging under welfare reform and its overarching policy of devolution presents a challenge to evaluators. Given such features as time limits and benefits caps that vary widely across states and communities, it is necessary not only to attend to urgent issues of immediate relevance ...

This chapter compares and contrasts the primary outcomes and methods used to evaluate the curricular changes at the eight schools participating in The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation "Preparing Physicians for the Future: Program in Medical Education." Each school evaluated its own program. The eight evaluators formed an ad hoc group ...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a cancer pain education program. METHOD: Participants in the program completed an evaluation form covering various aspects of the program's design. RESULTS: All participants who completed the program were glad that they had done so. The most and least useful aspects are included in the article. Participants ...

In this case study, the authors discuss external, formative program evaluation as a means to monitor and sustain ongoing curricular change and to prepare for periodic accreditation reviews. The Faculty of Medicine at Sherbrooke (in Quebec, Canada), following a major curricular reform begun in the mid-1980s, held three external, formative ...

As a result of new accreditation standards, diminishing resources, community concern with recidivism, and state agencies and foundations requiring more rigorous evaluations, program accountability is becoming a necessity for social services providers and contractors alike. In the subsequent discussion, Boysville of Michigan's program specification process is described; specifically, the ways ...

This is the second article in a two-part series that describes an organization's approach to designing, implementing, and evaluating a communication system. Part 1 of this series, published in the March 1998 issue, focused on the design and implementation of this system. This article addresses the evaluation of outcomes related ...

Effects of self-presentational behaviors of 2 German politicians during an election campaign were analyzed. Six scenes from interviews with the politicians were presented to 43 German students, who qualitatively evaluated the politicians' performances. The participants did not perceive behaviors such as interrupting journalists, brushing off criticism, reacting with countercriticism, and ...

Recent evaluations of ACT programs have produced equivocal findings, often leading to the invocation of methodological problems as responsible for the lack of positive results. This paper discusses issues of theory and methodology as they pertain to improving research of ACT, with particular attention paid to issues of sampling, process ...

The authors reviewed the literature published from 1966 to 1996 to identify enrichment programs for underrepresented minority precollege students sponsored by medical schools and affiliated programs, finding 19 articles describing 27 programs. The authors categorized the reported programs according to the components they contained. Most programs contained more than one ...

This article evaluates the effectiveness of a telephone-based guided self-help program for women who binge eat. We report how key program components (e.g., phone sessions, the self-help book) contribute to the four self-help goals identified in the clinical literature: (1) decrease isolation/increase support; (2) increase knowledge of the problem; (3) ...

This article is an overview and practical guide for the evaluation of community-based disease prevention and health promotion programs. The article first offers a rationale for evaluating community-based programs, then enumerates five selected principles that are contemporary to community evaluation. The principles are as follows: (1) evaluation of community programs ...

The evaluation of community-based programs poses special design and analysis problems. The present article focuses on two major types of errors that can occur in such evaluations: false positive--incorrectly declaring a program to be effective--and false negatives--incorrectly declaring a program to be ineffective. The evaluation of a national demonstration of ...

Evaluation of the North Coast Stay on Your Feet falls prevention program is described as a case study of a comprehensive evaluation design for multi-strategic community interventions. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to evaluate the program at formative, process and outcome levels. Formative evaluation used literature review, focus groups, ...

The following article describes the evaluation challenges faced in a cross-cultural substance abuse training program. Non-Southeast Asian instructors designed and taught courses for Cambodian and Vietnamese human service workers over a two-year period. Although cultural considerations were a central focus in the design of the program, instructors underestimated the difficulty ...

The Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University has developed a set of seven Principles of Universal Design that may be used to guide the design process, to evaluate existing or new designs, and to teach students and practitioners. This article presents preceding design guidelines and evaluation criteria, ...

A process evaluation of social model residential substance abuse programs was conducted by the Alcohol Research Group (ARG) from September 1995 to April 1996. This paper first describes the qualitative protocol used in that study, including site selection, rules for observation, and the grounded theory approach taken to data analysis. ...

This paper presents a rationale for using videotape records in evaluation research. Although videotaping is commonly used in ethnographic and sociometric analysis, the evaluation literature does not show the application of these recording techniques to program evaluations. The authors outline a model for exploring the effectiveness of video in qualitative ...

This article discusses issues and strategies for program evaluation particularly useful for community-based organizations (CBOs) involved in the development and implementation of HIV preventing programs for women. The approach the authors present is an extension of a traditional public health paradigm suggested for use in the development and evaluation of ...

Administrative policies and programs play an important and growing role as determinants of the use of medical care. Although some policies and programs may be harmful or ineffectual, randomized, controlled trials or prospective evaluations are rarely done for political or logistic reasons. Most evaluations are retrospective and often use administrative ...

We describe a case study evaluation of Kansas LEAN, a statewide partnership with the mission of reducing risks for chronic diseases through dietary and exercise modification. We used a case study design to examine five primary questions related to process and outcome: (a) were the goals of the partnership important ...

This paper is the second installment which reports a study conducted by the authors following successful application to the Yorkshire Regional Health Authority in response to a call for proposals for studies into practice-led education and development. The aim of the project is to pilot and evaluate an approach to ...

Although much has been written about measurement instruments for evaluating critical thinking in nursing, this article describes clinical evaluation strategies for critical thinking. Five methods are discussed: 1) observation of students in practice; 2) questions for critical thinking, including Socratic questioning; 3) conferences; 4) problem-solving strategies; and 5) written assignments. ...

This article describes how organizations devise strategic directions. The process of focused strategic or hoshin planning is introduced and reviewed. This model illustrates how a nursing department planned a focused strategic direction for outcomes evaluation. This discussion includes the dedication of resources, the focusing of research priorities and a summary ...

The evaluators of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Community Health Promotion Grants Program in the West and the Foundation brought together 21 researchers, funders, and community organizers with a variety of perspectives on community-based health promotion to share what has been learned to date and how that knowledge should ...

Over the past decade only a limited number of public health initiatives have been subjected to systematic monitoring and evaluation and, in many instances, there is growing pressure to estimate which approaches work best for a given level of inputs in order to allocate resources effectively. However, evaluation is very ...

Most evolutionary optimization models incorporate a fitness evaluation that is based on a predefined static set of test cases or problems. In the natural evolutionary process, selection is of course not based on a static fitness evaluation. Organisms do not have to combat every existing disease during their lifespan; organisms ...

This article illustrates how the logic model and a course on program evaluation at a large health sciences centre were instrumental in preparing staff to evaluate their own programs. Staff and physicians need basic skills in program evaluation. The logic model is a simple yet useful tool in helping to ...

One possible approach for making long-term-care systems more consumer-directed is to provide the consumer with a cash alternative. Advocates have touted the possible advantages of this approach, while nay-sayers have worried about the potential for abuse and questioned the claims of cost savings. This article describes the Cash and Counseling ...

Health program evaluation is generally focused on an examination of individual program characteristics and accomplishments, yet many programs are part of a broader service system. Evaluation of the role a program plays in that system is an important evaluation question to address. A network analysis of program referral patterns was ...

BACKGROUND: Academic biomedical journals use peer review and editing to help to select and improve the quality of articles. We have investigated whether articles accepted by the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, the Dutch Journal of Medicine, were improved after peer review and editing (post-acceptance scientific and copy editing). METHODS: 400 ...

Crisis intervention is based upon crisis theory and is defined as a short-term active mode of therapy that focuses on solving the client's immediate problem and reestablishing psychological equilibrium. The crisis intervention program was the first phase in the development of a broader mental health program with advancement decisions being ...

Several authors have suggested that the purpose of evaluating programs in their dissemination phase is to show that the conditions necessary to produce the expected outcomes are implemented. The need for outcome evaluation should thus decrease when a program goes from the demonstration to the dissemination phase. Disputing such a ...

As payers place more weight on contracting with hospital/health system programs that can differentiate themselves in the market as a "true" center of excellence (COE), it becomes imperative that hospitals/health systems understand the payer perspective about those programmatic attributes that can truly differentiate them from other programs. This report describes ...

Educational practice is moving away from an "eligibility-oriented" student-problem approach toward a problem-solving approach that connects evaluation and interventions. This approach involves the identification of variables used to frame interventions, and, ultimately, it permits evaluation of intervention effectiveness. This article describes a problem-solving model developed and used within the Heartland ...

The national evaluation of the federally funded Healthy Start program involved translating a design for a process and outcomes evaluation and standard maternal and infant data set, both developed prior to the national evaluation contract award, into an evaluation design and client data collection protocol that could be used to ...

Based on extensive experience as a reviewer of evaluations of federal health programs, the author distinguishes and discusses two sources of evidence for the credibility of an evaluation. Substantive credibility is indicated by the quality of the literature review; the evaluative understanding manifest in the description of the program or ...

Most continuing education program evaluations are developed informally with little attention paid to psychometric properties. Rigorous evaluation of continuing education programs should measure quality and allow valid comparisons across programs. The Program Evaluation Instrument (PEI), which evaluates continuing education programs, was tested in this study to further evaluate its psychometric ...

The effectiveness of federal programs is often difficult to measure because many are authorized to support a broad range of objectives without common outcome goals, measures, and reporting requirements. When direct program evaluation is not possible, it may be possible instead to evaluate how well the strategies that federal programs ...

Program development has become an essential role function for today's CNS, who must be able to evaluate programs to determine their efficacy. A useful evaluation guide is Stufflebeam's CIPP (context, input, process, and product) model, which includes a framework to evaluate indirect care measures directly affecting cost-effectiveness and accountability. The ...

The paper describes a quality control program based on the principles of clinical methodology and indicators defined by physicians and hospital administrators according to general as well as local needs. The program is supported by a knowledge-based system which can be used in two ways: with on-line helps and hints ...

A central theme in both medical sociology and health psychology is how people make sense of their symptoms. Both literatures, despite their stress on different aspects of the health evaluation process, see illness in terms of matching present symptoms to an underlying understanding of illness. In this paper we argue ...