Social Experimentation Program Evaluation And Public Policy

This volume provides a single collection some of the best articles on social experimentation and program evaluation that have appeared in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM). Provides exposure to a variety of well-executed social experiments and evaluations for evidence-based public policy Examines the theory and conduct of evaluations and social experiments as they relate to their practical implementation in evidence-based policy making Provides exposure to the fundamental issues surrounding the conduct of evaluations as well as to the relative merits of social experiments and the ethics and use of evaluations

This volume provides a single collection some of the best articles on social experimentation and program evaluation that have appeared in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM). Provides exposure to a variety of well-executed social experiments and evaluations for evidence-based public policy Examines the theory and conduct of evaluations and social experiments as they relate to their practical implementation in evidence-based policy making Provides exposure to the fundamental issues surrounding the conduct of evaluations as well as to the relative merits of social experiments and the ethics and use of evaluations

Evaluation is a controversial and little-understood strategy of public governance, control, and decision making. As early as classical antiquity, scholars were summoned to court to counsel kings. Public policy and program evaluation is a recent addition to the great chain of attempts to use the brainpower of scholars and scientists to further the interests of the state. Evaluation scholars are asked to provide retrospective assessments of the implementation, output, and outcome of government measures in order to effect deeper understanding and well-grounded decisions on the part of those in charge of government operations. Evaluation is the process of distinguishing the worthwhile from the worthless, the precious from the useless; evaluation implies looking backward in order to be able to steer forward better. Written from a political science perspective, Public Policy and Program Evaluation provides an overview of the possibilities and limits of public sector evaluation. Evert Vedung examines evaluation as a mechanism for monitoring, systematizing, and grading government activities and their results so that public officials, in their future-oriented work, will be able to act as responsibly, creatively, and efficiently as possible. Topics discussed include: "Evaluation, Rationality, and Theories of Public Management"; "Models of Evaluation"; "Internal or External Evaluation"; "Impact Assessment as Tryout and Social Experimentation"; "Process Evaluation and Implementation Theory"; "The Eight-Problems Approach to Evaluation"; and "Uses and Users of Evaluation." All evaluation rests upon the idea that perceptions, opinions, intentions, judgments—in short, everything concerned with the world of human consciousness—play such interesting roles in political and administrative action that their functions are worth investigating. Through experience, humans may learn from past actions. The interventions of the modern state are so extensive, their execu

Evaluation is the process of distinguishing the worthwhile from the worthless, the precious from the useless: evaluation implies looking backward in order to be able to steer forward better. Written from a political science perspective, Public Policy and Program Evaluation provides an overview of the possibilities and limits of public sector evaluation.

Intended to provide a basic understanding not only of how to design and implement social experiments, but also of how to interpret their results once they are completed, author Larry L. Orr's Social Experiments is written in a friendly, how-to manner. Through the use of illustrative examples, how-to exhibits and cases, and boldface key words, Orr provides readers with a grounding in the experimental method, including the rational and ethical issues of random assignment; designs that best address alternative policy questions; maximizing the precision of the estimates; implementing the experiment in the field; data collection; estimating and interpreting program impacts, costs, and benefits; dealing with potential biases; and the use and misuse of experimental results in the policy process. This book will be useful not only to those who plan to conduct experiments, but also to the much larger group who will, at one time or another, want to understand the results of experimental evaluations.

Addressing an issue of burning interest to every taxpayer, a Heritage Foundation scholar brings objective analysis to bear as he responds to the important—and provocative—question posed by his book's title. Of course, the answer to that question will also help determine whether the American public should fear budget cuts to federal social programs. Readers, says author David B. Muhlhausen, can rest easy. As his book decisively demonstrates, scientifically rigorous national studies almost unanimously find that the federal government fails to solve social problems. To prove his point, Muhlhausen reports on large-scale evaluations of social programs for children, families, and workers, some advocated by Democrats, some by Republicans. But it isn't just the results that matter. It's the lesson to readers on how Americans can—and should—accurately assess government programs that cost hundreds of billions of dollars each year. At the book's core is an insistence that we move beyond anecdotal reasoning and often-partisan opinion to measure the effectiveness of social programs using objective analysis and scientific methods. At the very least, the results of such analysis will, like this book, provide a sound basis for much-needed public debate.

Evaluation and Experiment: Some Critical Issues in Assessing Social Programs is a collection of papers presented at the 1973 symposium held at The Battelle Seattle Research Center. This book contains eight chapters that consider some selected aspects of the problems in evaluating the outcomes of socially important programs, such as those dealing with education, health, and economic policy. The first chapter provides an overview of the issues around the Social Program Evaluation. The next chapters deal with the successes and failures brought by social innovations; the quasi-experimental evaluation in compensatory education to estimate the true effects of such education programs; and the usefulness and validity of econometric and related nonexperimental approaches for assessing the effects of social programs. These topics are followed by surveys of a number of additional program-evaluation studies, particularly in the field of family planning or fertility control, mostly carried out as experiments or quasi-experiments in Asian and Latin American countries. Other chapters describe the decision processes that involve explicit assessment of the worth or merit of outcomes and employ multivalued utility analysis and outline the ways in which evaluative data are useful in providing feedback to program or institutional operations and decisions. The final chapter discusses resolutions for some of the disagreements expressed by others concerning the role of field experiments, constraints in their utilization, and other factors that enter into a comprehensive conception of program evaluation.

First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.

Social experimentation randomly assigns individuals or groups to coverage by the policy of interest or a control group and then the groups are compared in terms of outcome. Greenberg (economics, U. of Maryland), Linksz (mathematics, science, and engineering, Community College of Baltimore County), and Mandell (policy sciences, U. of Maryland) seek to assess whether the substantial investment in social experimentation in the United States has resulted in significant public policy changes. After explaining the general concepts behind social experimentation, they analyze five case studies and determine that they are not of decisive importance in state policy making, but they often serve useful purposes of policy formation. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).