What is systematic evaluation and what are some of the challenges in conducting one?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Systematic program evaluation is the application of social research methods to systematically investigate the effectiveness of social intervention programs in ways that are adapted to their political and organizational environments and are designed to inform social action to improve social conditions. One such challenge is the relativity of program effects. With rare exceptions, some program participants will show improvement on the outcomes the program targets, but that does not necessarily mean these gains were caused by participation in the program. It follows that program effects are often hard to discern. Most program effects are not black or white but in the gray area,in which the influence of the program it is not obvious. A direct approach to this ambiguity would be to ask the participants if the program helped them. They will almost certainly have opinions to offer, but they will not be reliable informants about program effects. Alternatively, we might ask the program providers about how effective the program is. The line staff who deliver the services and interact directly with recipients certainly seem to be in a position to provide a good assessment of how well the program is working. Here, however, we encounter the problem of confirmation bias—the tendency to see things in ways favoring preexisting beliefs. The approaches of evaluating the performance of a program that may seem most natural and straightforward, therefore, cannot be counted on to provide a valid assessment. If program evaluation is to arrive at valid conclusions about program performance, systematic methods structured to avoid bias and misrepresentation must be usedas much as possible.