Option 1. You can choose your current or former field placement or place of employment to conduct the evaluation. Speak with your supervisor regarding an appropriate, feasible evaluation of interest to the agency. Ask what data might be available for you to use. Appropriate data include data regularly collected by the agency, or data that you collect yourself. The data should not be aggregated, such as in a year-end report or annual report, but should be in a format that can be analyzed using JASP, SPSS, or some other statistical program.
Option 2. You may use a hypothetical human agency, Human Services of Southern New Jersey, for the evaluation. There is a website you may access containing information about three programs, the Girls Support Group, Substance Abuse Services, and Transitional Group Homes for Young Adults. There is also data that you may use for analysis. The website is: http://humanservicesnj.weebly.com/ (Links to an external site.)
Once there, you will be on the home page. Then click on Family Support. That page will give you a brief description of the Girls Support Group program. For more information, click on Girls Support Group Reports. Any information you do not find there you can create for purposes of this paper.
To access the Substance Abuse Services, click on Substance Abuse Services. That page will give you a brief description of the services available for adolescents and adults. Click on the Outpatient Adult Substance Abuse Treatment, then Reports. You will find data that you can use for a paper.
To access the Transitional Group Homes program, click on Transitional Group Homes for Young Adults under Safe Supportive Housing. This is a program for youth transitioning out of the foster care system. You will find information there, then click on Transitional Living Program Data.
Your report should no more than 12–14 pages long (APA style), not including charts. You should have 5–8 references, one of which should be Royse et al. Your paper should be submitted to the Module 14 assignment page and include a statement identifying the contribution of each group member to the writing of the paper. Only one member of the team needs to submit the paper.
For this evaluation report you are to use subheadings covering all the sections below:
- Executive Summary (less than 1 page)
- Background of the Program and Statement of the Evaluation Goals (1 page)
- Describe the program, including its goals and objectives.
- List the goals of your evaluation.
- Brief Literature Review (2–3 pages): What is known already about evaluating this type of program?
- Methodology (1–2 pages): How did you evaluate your program?
- Evaluation design
- Sample
- Data collection techniques
- Data collection instruments
- Data analysis
- Outcome measures
- Results (1–2 pages
- Using descriptive statistics, describe the demographic characteristics of your sample, e.g., age, race, sex, and so forth.
- Using at least one or more statistical tests you think appropriate, describe the results of your data analysis to answer your evaluation question(s).
- Discussion of Results (2–3 pages)
- What do these findings mean? What could account for these findings other than the intervention?
- How do the limitations of the study (the design, instrument, sample, reliability, validity) influence findings?
- Conclusions and Recommendations (2–4 pages)
- Conclusions: Based on your findings, what can you say about the program meeting its goals and objectives?
- Recommendations regarding the program: Based on your findings, what does the program need to do?
- Recommendations regarding subsequent evaluation of the program: What recommendations would you make to other researchers interested in evaluating this type of program? Be specific.
