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A client of mine is a social service agency. One of their smallest programs (serving about 40 clients at any given time) offers case management for individuals involved with the criminal justice system. The typical program participant has recently been released from a long prison sentence, is drug-addicted, and suffers from a chronic health condition (most often HIV, but also hepatitis, diabetes, and cancer). The audience is hard to engage, service staff are chronically overworked, and, largely because the number of participants is so small, the quarterly evaluation has sometimes not shown much progress. After almost four years of evaluating this program, I’ve learned a few lessons that I hope can help other evaluators assess their own approaches:
It’s important to point out that these lessons can be applied to almost any program evaluation! This program works with a very specific target audience, but I will take these lessons with me when I work on other evaluations.
Author: Jessica Broome
Jessica’s question to you
What other lessons have you learned from program evaluations?
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How to operationalize an Effective Culture of Evaluation at the National and Organizational Levels?
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Lessons Learned from
Evaluating a Case Management Program
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Best Lines of Evidence for Evaluating Strategic Plans
Impact of Evaluation Belief vs Actual Practice on Choice of Design
All rights reserved ─ Copyright © 2015 by Magate Wildhorse ℠
A keen ear for topics related to research may often hear examples of a research method being described as a research methodology; or of a research methodology described as a research method.
In this post we hope to help the mind to believe what the eyes see and what the ears hear by presenting what I will call classic or strict definitions and examples for accurately distinguishing between the two terms.
Thanks to Google I will not have to re-invent the wheel; instead I will refer to the article “Research dilemmas: Paradigms, methods and methodology”, by Noella Mackenzie and Sally Knipe of Charles Sturt University. In the article Mackenzie and Knipe cited the definition of research methods offered by McMillan & Schumacher in Research in Education, it reads as follows ━ “Research methods – how data are collected and analysed – and the types of generalizations and representations derived from the data (McMillan & Schumacher, 2006, p. 12)”.
By explaining that method consists of “systematic modes, procedures or tools used for collection and analysis of data”, the authors make it easier for readers to understand what may be described as research method. Among the variety of data collection tools which make up methods are: survey questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and photographs.
James R. Martin, Ph.D., CMAProfessor Emeritus, University of Sourth Florida (Management and Accounting Web) http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/FrameworkForResearchMethodology.gif
With our memories refreshed as it relates to methods, let us now turn our attention to the term methodology which covers much more than methods do. Mackenzie and Knipe describe research methodology as “the overall approach to research linked to the paradigm or theoretical framework”. In other words methodology explains how the researcher will solve the problem that is being addressed by the research and include among other components, the methods, frameworks, and indicators of success that will be applied to the study.
Now that we have focused our eyes on what is covered by the term research method, namely: tools, modes and procedures for data collection and analysis; versus methodology which addresses theoretical frameworks, methods and other components described above we hope it will be easier for the mind to distinguish between often heard misuse of the terms and their more accurate, accepted, and formal meaning.
You might find it useful to visit the article and to take a quick review of the two tables listed below, which were used by the authors to illustrate the differences in meaning between research method and research methodology.
“Research dilemmas: Paradigms, methods and methodology”, (Issues in Educational Research, Volume, 16, 2006), is available [Online] at: http://www.iier.org.au/iier16/mackenzie.html.
Scott, M. E., Copyright © 2015 Magate Wildhorse. All rights reserved.
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