[relac] What’s New in the Second Edition of Real World Evaluation? Michael Bamberger, Jim Rugh, Linda Mabry

The 2nd edition of the RealWorld Evaluation book is currently being printed by Sage.  It is scheduled to be available sometime in December, 2011.  To place your order go to www.sagepub.com/rwe.

 What’s New in the Second Edition of Real World Evaluation?

·A greater focus on responsible professional practice, codes of conduct, and the importance of ethical standards for all evaluations.

·Some new perspectives on the debate over the “best” evaluation designs. While experimental designs can address the important issues of selection bias, such statistical designs are potentially vulnerable to a number of important threats to validity. These include process and contextual analysis, collecting information on sensitive topics and from difficult-to-reach groups, difficulties in adapting to changes in the evaluation design, and implementation strategies. Experience also suggests that strong statistical designs can be applied only in a very small proportion of evaluations.

·There are many instances in which well-designed nonexperimental designs will be the best option for assessing outcomes of many programs, particularly for evaluating complex programs and even “simple” programs that involve complex processes of behavioral change.

·The importance of understanding the setting within which the evaluation is designed, implemented, and used.

·Program theory as a central building block of most evaluation designs. The expanded discussion incorporates theory of change, contextual and process analysis, multilevel logic models, using competing theories, and trajectory analysis.

·The range of evaluation design options has been considerably expanded, and case studies are included to illustrate how each of the 19 designs has been applied in the field.

·Greater emphasis is given to the benefits of mixed-method evaluation designs. 

·A new chapter has been added on the evaluation of complicated and complex development interventions. Conventional pretest-posttest comparison group designs can rarely be applied to the increasing proportion of development assistance channeled through complex interventions, and a range of promising new approaches—still very much “work in progress”—is presented.