The World Bank and housing policy in Madras

The World Bank began its involvement with housing and urban programmes in 1972, offering a new theory and practice. This new theory emphasised “affordability” and the recovery of costs from the beneficiaries of programmes. It stood in contrast to the conventional way of doing things, with government providing “permanent construction” housing with extensive subsidies. “Affordable” housing would take the form of serviced plots of land on which the occupants arranged their own building (i.e. sites-and-services schemes), and in situ slum upgrading. In Madras, policymakers and senior public servants had a positive attitude to housing, especially for low-income groups. Consequently Madras contains much interest for developing countries generally in an evaluation of World Bank experience there, commencing in 1977.     

The GOAT effects impact upon educational R and D

The GOAT (Goodbye To All That) Effect is introduced as a special research and evaluation “outcome” effect characterizing decision-making unduly influenced by abandoning “write-off” tendencies, especially in the face of mounting problems. GOAT behavior can enter into educational decision-making all too easily because it finds a congenial atmosphere in education's habit of fluctuating with the latest trends and vogues and because it can use the prevailing systems analysis approach in much of educational management and evaluation as a blind. The “gradual refinement” approach offers an antidote to the GOAT Effect primarily because it is a fundamentally different approach from systems analysis and directly opposes the faddish orientation of current education.     

Political and organizational preconditions for application of the standards for educational evaluation : The standards for educational evaluation seen in a wider perspective in relation to policy making and organization

Some of the standards for educational evaluation refer to the political and organizational context in which evaluation projects take place: “conflicting interests,” “political viability,” and various standards which have to do with the identification of the evaluation object and of the most important groups and persons involved. Whereas the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation seems to focus on the level of the individual research project, the present authors feel that in addition, contextual influences on evaluations should be analyzed at a higher level of aggregation. Political and organizational factors at the macro level can even be seen as preconditions for the application of the standards at project level. This point of view is illustrated by referring to a study of the functioning of evaluation research within some innovative programs in Dutch education.     

Applicability of standards for evaluations of educational programs, projects and materials in an international setting

This paper starts with a short discussion of the book Standards for Evaluations of Educational Programs, Projects and Materials by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation (McGraw-Hill, 1981). It then goes on to examine the usefulness in countries other than the United States of these standards and argues that evaluation of “programs” is more complicated and more politically biased than evaluation of “projects” and “materials.” In Europe, evaluation of educational programs (school systems) has proved to be highly correlated with the overriding objectives of different political parties, e.g., conservative, liberal, socialist, whereas educational policy in the United States is less bound to political parties, varying rather from case to case. In order to show how generally agreed upon educational goals can be interpreted according to different values, the author has reanalysed some studies of mean achievement in reading comprehension and science for 10- and 14-year-old students in 15 countries (IEA Project, 1973). The rank order of these countries is changed if, instead of national mean achievement, one takes proportion of students under a minimum level or above a prescribed top level as the criterion. Also the national (program) standard is evaluated in terms of between-school variance in results and in proportion of single-school units with exceptionally low or exceptionally high mean results. The conclusion is that the book on standards for evaluations of educational programs provides a good checklist of prerequisites for a reliable and valid evaluation. However, it is also concluded that—due to differences in values of program outcomes—such standards do not guarantee that the result of the evaluation will be indisputable.     

A meta-evaluation, or quality assessment, of the evaluations in this issue, based on the African Evaluation Guidelines: 2002

Fourteen evaluations of UNICEF and UNAIDS HIV/AIDS programmes underwent a quality control process called ‘meta-evaluation’, which is an evaluation of the quality of the evaluation. This process of evaluating an evaluation is considered professional good practice by African Evaluation Associations and Networks, as well as the American, Canadian, German, Korean, Swiss and other national professional associations of evaluators. The quality control criteria used were the African Evaluation Guidelines—a list of 30 quality-enhancing standards that can be used as a checklist by evaluators to ensure that evaluation studies are performed well. These quality control criteria can also be applied retrospectively as a quality control method, to assess completed evaluation studies. The results of this quality control review process, for the 14 papers in this issue of Evaluation and Program Planning, are presented and discussed. An indication of a possible area of weakness in HIV/AIDS programme evaluation emerges from this analysis.     

Open systems evaluation and the logic model: Program planning and evaluation tools

This paper describes two case management projects and efforts to evaluate outcomes. Lessons learned from the first effort suggest that a tool referred to as the logic model and a particular approach to evaluation called the “open systems” model might be useful to planners and program evaluators. The logic model provides a means of presenting conditions a program is intended to address, activities that constitute a program, short term outcomes resulting from program activities and long term impacts. The open systems perspective emphasizes evaluation as a tool to be used to achieve program objectives as opposed to establishing cause and effect relationships. This paper also describes how the logic model and open systems evaluation were used to facilitate the development of an evaluation plan for a project designed to assist homeless, substance abusing, pregnant women.     

The impact of general accounting office program evaluations on government

General Accounting Office (GAO) audit reports have an impact on government operations by encouraging growth in the size and scope of the state and by encouraging the Congress and executive agencies to attend to the auditor's dominant values of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government. Through its financial, management, and program audits, the GAO program evaluators seek to rationalize agency management and programs so that more resources are required. The GAO's program evaluation efforts also serve Congress by providing for oversight of public policy, a bludgeon to coax agencies into pursuing activities preferred by congressmen, and a tool for electoral activities. In the end, the evaluation auditors are doomed to frustration in achieving their ideals for effective democratic government. This is so because “practical business policy” is irrelevant to government operations and inconsistent with the core values of a democratic state.     

Program decisions : Evaluating a bird in the hand versus two in the bush

In new programs that have not reached full effectiveness, or in programs that are designed to produce future benefits (i.e., become “institutionalized”), evaluations that fail properly to assess future performance may bias decisions against the programs. For such programs, consideration of future benefits may significantly enhance the assessment of their cost-effectiveness. This paper describes an evaluation methodology based on decision theory that can take future benefits into account in evaluating a program. The methodology was applied to the Metropolitan Atlanta Crime Commission (MACC) Community Anti-Crime Project and indicated the potential for substantial future benefits subsequent to cessation of federal funding. The implications of use of this methodology and the MACC results for the overall Community Anti-Crime Program are also discussed.     

The issue is human quality: In praise of children

This essay is based on the premise that quality in human life is inseparably linked to the well-being of children. In this view, the well-being of children is both the principal challenge faced by a modern society and the principal focal point tor a society “bound to move away from ‘growth’ defined as quantitative product irrespective of what and whom it is for.” Children and their needs provide an anchoring point for adult relationships that is “labor intensive” and intrinsically satisfying when set within a social context rich in enduring, reciprocal interpersonal relationships. The principal threats to the quality of social life are trends toward universalistic rather than particularistic systems for evaluating individuals, and materialistic rather than social criteria for evaluating productivity. Both these trends threaten childrearing as a valued activity. Both emphasize the “hurdensomeness” of children. Large schools and socially isolated families are the contexts in which these two trends find their most dangerous expression. A sustainable society requires a pro-family orientation if it is to meet the needs of children and thus provide for the fundamental psychic needs of adults. A variety of implications for individual action and social planning are derived from this discussion. These implications include the need to preserve and restore socially strong neighborhoods, reduce school size, and conduct “family impact analysis” as a basis for guiding decisions in the public and private sectors.     

Truth-in-sentencing, law enforcement, and inmate population growth

This paper presents the empirical estimation of an econometric model of the flow of prisoners into a state correctional system. Specifically, an econometric model was built to control for the number of parolees, the probability of admission to the state system, the size of the state population, the unemployment and poverty rates, the number of law enforcement officers within the state, and the state-wide “truth-in-sentencing” law, which requires convicts to serve at least 85% of their sentences. One primary result was that increases in the number of law enforcement officers has generated a decline in the growth rate of the prison population. This suggests that a “deterrent effect” is created when more police are placed on the beat. Furthermore, the results indicate that the truth-in-sentencing law has also slowed the rate of inmate population growth. This finding may reflect the growing trend for courts to hand down nontraditional sentences and to adjust prison sentences to reflect a constant “real time” of incarceration by crime.     

Trustworthiness in evaluation practice: an emphasis on the relational

As canons for trustworthiness developed explicitly in the discourse of qualitative inquiry, the emphasis was on procedural matters rather than fundamentally relational ones. A nod was made to the relational in such strategies as “member checks” but the issues of how the evaluator actually relates to participants and to the larger communities of practice and discourse—matters subsumed under moral principles and ethical standards—were often marginalized. This chapter posits that the first consideration in designing and conducting rigorous evaluation inquiry, and in critiquing the results of any research, should be the study's trustworthiness. Judging a study's trustworthiness, however, should focus on much more than procedural matters; it should also rely on moral principles and ethical standards which specifically address how we relate to an evaluation's participants. Central to these considerations are cross-cultural sensibilities about the nuanced meanings associated with any principles and standards. The chapter provides a theoretical framework for this position and offers two illustrative examples in the form of dialogues.     

Learning from tradition: the planning of residential neighborhoods in a changing world

This paper analyses the community values of residential neighborhoods in the southwestern region of Saudi Arabia as an approach to a new theory in urbanism. The indigenous masterbuilders and tribemen incorporated planning decisions pertinent to climatic, cultural, social, economic and religious factors when designing physical elements in their built environment. This is what makes every traditional settlement in the southwest region of Saudi Arabia unique in terms of urban form and social structure. As a step to examining and evaluating the process of residential neighborhood development, three stages of practiced urbanism are discussed. These stages are labelled “vernacular”, “transitional” and “new vernacularism”. These are planning concepts used worldwide in the development of residential neighborhoods throughout history until the present. “New Vernacularism” is envisioned in this investigation as a design/planning objective implemented in most recently planned neighborhoods in Al-Horaidhah, Southwest Saudi Arabia. The achievement of successful urbanism underlies the political goals of urban planning practice. The Al-Horaidhah planning concept is conceived in the light of preservation of community values in neighborhood design/planning as a critical issue.The paper aims to investigate and reconcile the conflicts in the planning of residential neighborhoods in a changing world. The conflicts are restricted between retaining traditions of architecture, urban design and planning with the necessary social, economic, and technological changes in urban formation, mainly, the vernacular and modern. The paper illustrates the concept “New Vernacularism” by presenting Al-Horaidhah scheme as a model for community development in three administrative regions along the Red Sea coastline. “New Vernacularism” as a planning concept looks at the community development in Al-Horaidhah in the light of Sharicah, the Islamic Law and Customary norms by emphasizing the importance of the involvement of local residents in the planning process and gives suggestions of how this might best be achieved and later implemented into new communities.     

Lottomania and other anomalies in the market for lotto

This research is concerned with the determination of the demand for “lotto” in Israel. While an important focus of our research is upon the effects on the demand for lotto of ticket pricing and jackpot announcements, we also investigate several empirical phenomena that are apparently inconsistent with expected utility theory. These include an effect we call “lottomania” which is induced by rollover, and “prize fatigue” when the jackpot does not increase. Another aberration from expected utility theory is that the underlying odds of winning have no measurable effect on sales.     

Multi-profile welfarism: A generalization

This paper characterizes welfarist social evaluation in a multi-profile setting where, in addition to multiple utility profiles, there may be more than one profile of non-welfare information. We prove a new version of the welfarism theorem in this alternative framework, and we demonstrate that adding a plausible and weak anonymity property to the welfarism axioms generates welfarist social-evaluation orderings that are anonymous.This is a revised version of our earlier paper “Welfarism with multiple non-welfare profiles.” We thank François Maniquet, Kotaro Suzumura, John Weymark, an editor and two referees for comments and discussions. The paper was presented at the International Symposium on Intergenerational Equity in Tokyo, December 2001 and at the Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare in Pasadena, July 2002. Financial support through a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged.     

Systems thinking

Evaluation is one of many fields where “systems thinking” is popular and is said to hold great promise. However, there is disagreement about what constitutes systems thinking. Its meaning is ambiguous, and systems scholars have made diverse and divergent attempts to describe it. Alternative origins include: von Bertalanffy, Aristotle, Lao Tsu or multiple aperiodic “waves.” Some scholars describe it as synonymous with systems sciences (i.e., nonlinear dynamics, complexity, chaos). Others view it as taxonomy—a laundry list of systems approaches. Within so much noise, it is often difficult for evaluators to find the systems thinking signal. Recent work in systems thinking describes it as an emergent property of four simple conceptual patterns (rules). For an evaluator to become a “systems thinker”, he or she need not spend years learning many methods or nonlinear sciences. Instead, with some practice, one can learn to apply these four simple rules to existing evaluation knowledge with transformative results.     

“Paradigms lost”: Some thoughts on choosing methods in evaluation research

Patton agrees with us concerning the need for a catholic approach to method choices in evaluation. However, Patton criticizes us for setting up a straw man when we argued that quantitative and qualitative methods are not inevitably linked to different “paradigms” and that allegiance to a particular paradigm does not force the evaluator into a choice between mutually exclusive qualitative and quantitative methods. The first part of this article shows how some of the past literature creates the impression both of an inevitable method-paradigm linkage and of a forcedchoice between qualitative and quantitative paradigms. It is argued that such impressions could have pernicious consequences for evaluation practice by artificially restricting method choices. In the final section, we consider some of the difficulties of making method choices and suggest that the purposefully developed strengths of different methods should not be completely ignored.     

Homelessness: a proposal for a global definition and classification

On the base of an analysis of the definitions of homelessness currently in use, first a change of the notion “homelessness” to “houselessness” is proposed. Houseless persons are then defined as those sleeping rough or using public or private shelters. To better understand the causes of houselessness, its environment is involved in this classification under the notion of inadequate shelter. This comprises the following non-exclusive categories: risk of houselessness, concealed houselessness and substandard housing situations. This classification has the advantage to be adaptable to regional and national differences, while at the same time providing a global basis for data collection and comparison.     

Assessing outcomes for sufferers of severe mental disorder: A conceptual framework and review

A conceptual framework is presented for classifying the outcomes of services for sufferers of severe mental disorders. The proposed classification framework contains three dimensions: (a) the respondent type; (b) the social context; and (c) the domain of treatment outcomes. Respondent types include the client, the family, the extended social network, the clinician and the scientist. Social contexts include the individual, the family, work/school and the broader community. Domains of treatment outcome include “clinical status,” “functional status,” “life satisfaction and fulfillment,” and “safety and welfare.” This multidimensional framework is used to organize an illustrative review of existing outcome measures. It is concluded that: (a) measures of safety and welfare raise important social and policy questions and these measures require considerable development in order for utility to be realized; (b) although a good beginning has been made, more attention needs to be focused on defining and measuring “life satisfaction and fulfillment” and combining this domain with others to produce “well being” or “quality of life” scales; (c) the functional status area requires additional research and development especially when measurement is conducted in contexts other than work/school; and (d) although measures of clinical status are relatively well developed, the family perspective and context must be integrated into these measures.     

What inhibits the mere-exposure effect: Recollection or familiarity?

The mere-exposure effect is the formation of a positive affective reaction (PAR) to repeated or single exposure to a stimulus, even in the absence of awareness. The mere-exposure effect indicates that communication effects go beyond “explicit memory”, measured with the traditional measures of (aided) recall and recognition. “Implicit memory” indicates latent communication effects, e.g., liking, for persons exposed to particular stimuli. The mere-exposure effect in the absence of awareness represents implicit memory. In this study, the mere-exposure effect is observed by using a new type of divided-attention method with Chinese participants responding to Chinese characters. The prediction by the two-factor model of mere-exposure effect is confirmed. Recognition (“explicit memory”) may inhibit the mere-exposure effect. Recognition memory is a dual process with two aspects: recollection and familiarity. Employing the process dissociation procedure (PDP) (Jacoby, L.L., 1991. Journal of Memory and Language 30, 513–541), it is found that familiarity of above-chance recognition is greater than that of chance recognition. It is the high level of familiarity and not recollection of abovechance recognition that inhibits the mere-exposure effect. The implications of these findings are that a high level of familiarity inhibits the primary affective reaction and “replaces” this reaction with a more conscious and cognitive evaluation. With the two-factor model, with wear-in (habituation) and wear-out (satiation) factors, the optimal level of exposure may be determined in order to increase the affective reaction. The study shows the robustness of the mere-exposure effect, also for familiar stimuli.     

Market overreach: The student as customer

This paper explores the market model's influence in redefining the relationship between teachers and students within the college and university. Viewing the student as a customer rather than as a “worker” or “apprentice” is argued to have created several problems. The case is made that with market forces leading to the substitution of purchased commodities for “production for self,” the role of the student in actively participating in the learning process is threatened. Several trends, including grade inflation, shortened contact hours, and the redefinition of study time are offered as evidence that the non-salable components of higher education are declining in importance.