Improving Programs Using Evaluation

A public health program is costly in time, expenditures, and effort. The stakes are high, and the aims are noble, often no less than improving the wellbeing of an entire community or group. The only way to determine whether the program has been worth these costs is to conduct thorough evaluations. In public health, as in most fields, researchers and experts have differing terms for similar concepts, and there is a lack of consistent labels that are used throughout a given discipline. For example, public health textbooks differ in how they categorize subtopics under the umbrella term of evaluation. This week’s course texts describe two differing ways to conceptualize the four types of evaluation on which you will focus this week: formative, process, impact, and outcome. Although they agree on formative and process evaluation, they give opposite explanations for impact and outcome evaluations. For the purposes of this week’s work, please use the Fertman text’s definitions.