Evaluability Assessment

Dr. Mike Trevisan is the dean of the College of Education and professor of educational psychology at Washington State University, where he has worked for 26 years. Dr. Trevisan has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator on many grants and contracts that require evaluation and has obtained more than $8 million in external funding. Dr. Trevisan is widely published in the field of evaluation and is often tapped as a consultant in the planning, development, and implementation of evaluations at both the local and national levels. He has provided evaluation workshops to K-12 school districts, state agencies, universities, nonprofit groups, the United Nations Population Fund, and professional meetings. His recent work focuses on the development of evaluation capacity internationally. To this end, he has provided evaluation workshops to students, faculty, and practitioners in several countries including India, Italy, and Thailand. In 2018, he received a Fulbright specialist award to Korea to help develop evaluation capacity among K-12 school counselors. Dr. Trevisan co-authored the book, Evaluability Assessment: Improving Evaluation Quality and Use, published in 2015.Dr. Tamara Walser has worked in the evaluation field for more than 25 years. She is a professor in the department of Educational Leadership at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she coordinates the Evaluation and Organizational Learning M.S. degree and Evaluation post-baccalaureate certificate program; she teaches courses in evaluation, inquiry methods, and academic writing. Dr. Walser previously worked as an evaluator in non-profit and for-profit organizations. She has served as Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigator, Project Manager, Lead Evaluator, and as an Advisory Group member on numerous grants and contracts focused on evaluation; and has presented research and training on evaluation nationally and internationally. She co-authored the book, Evaluability Assessment: Improving Evaluation Quality and Use, published in 2015. Dr. Walser obtained a Ph.D. in Research and Evaluation and a M.S. in Instructional Design and Development from Utah State University; she earned a B.A. in French from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and began her professional career as a French teacher.

The most impressive aspect of this book is that it positions EA as an approach that perfectly fits within the current philosophical views on program evaluation…. The authors do a great job connecting these theories to practice, and provide good guidelines.

• PREFACE1. The Evaluability Assessment Story2. Evaluability Assessment and Program Evaluation3. Introducing Our Evaluability Assessment Model4. Focusing the Evaluability Assessment5. Developing an Initial Program Theory6. Gathering Feedback on Program Theory7. Using the Evaluability Assessment8. Additional Considerations