Evaluation: A Systematic Approach

"Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, now in its seventh edition, has assumed the role of a true classic in its domain."
-- LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE RESEARCH

Since Peter H. Rossi, Mark W. Lipsey, and Howard E. Freeman first published Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, more than 100,000 readers have considered it the premier text on how to design, implement, and appraise social programs through evaluation. In this completely revised Seventh Edition, the authors include the latest techniques and approaches to evaluation as well as guidelines to tailor evaluations to fit programs and social contexts.

This bestselling text covers the full range of evaluation topics, including:

- Framing evaluation questions

- Uncovering program theory

- Studying implementation

- Designing impact assessments

- Assessing program costs and benefits

- Understanding the politics of evaluating

With decades of hands-on experience conducting evaluations, the authors provide scores of examples to help students understand how evaluators deal with various critical issues. They include a glossary of key terms and concepts, making this the most comprehensive and authoritative evaluation text available.

Thoroughly revised, the Seventh Edition now includes:

- Substantially more attention to outcome measurement

- Lengthy discussions of program theory, including a section about detecting program effects and interpreting their practical significance

- An augmented and updated discussion of major evaluation designs

- A detailed exposition of meta-analysis as an approach to the synthesis of evaluation studies

- Alternative approaches to evaluation

- Examples of successful evaluations

- Discussions of the political and social contexts of evaluation.

Mark W. Lipsey is the Director of the Center for Evaluation Research and Methodology, and a Senior Research Associate, at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies (Ph.D. in Psychology from The Johns Hopkins University in 1972). His professional interests are in the areas of public policy, program evaluation research, social intervention, field research methodology, and research synthesis (meta-analysis).  The topics of his recent research have been risk and intervention for juvenile delinquency and substance use, early childhood education programs, and issues of methodological quality in program evaluation research. Professor Lipsey serves on the editorial boards of Evaluation and Program Planning, Psychological Bulletin, the Journal of Experimental Criminology, and the American Journal of Community Psychology, and boards or committees of, among others, the National Research Council, the Department of Education What Works Clearinghouse, Campbell Collaboration, and Blueprints for Violence Prevention. He is a recipient of the American Evaluation Association’s Paul Lazarsfeld Award, the Society of Prevention Research’s Nan Tobler Award, a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, and co-author of the program evaluation textbook, Evaluation: A Systematic Approach and the meta-analysis primer, Practical Meta-Analysis.