Academic literature on the topic 'Applied sociology, program evaluation and social impact assessment'

Confirmatory program evaluation is discussed as a method for conducting theorydriven evaluations. It is an impact assessment that emphasizes the explication and testing of a priori program theories within a broad assessment of program effectiveness. Greater emphasis is given to identifying the causal mechanisms or active ingredients of intervention effects. Confirmatory evaluation approaches are applied to the field of early childhood intervention. Although significant progress in understanding the effects of early childhood interventions has occurred over the last four decades, questions remain about the causal mechanisms of change, who benefits most from which program components, and the reliability of effects for large-scale programs. Examples from the Chicago Longitudinal Study are highlighted to show how confirmatory evaluation can help validate the effects of social interventions. Studies of the Chicago Child-Parent Centers are described to emphasize how the causal criteria of coherence, specificity, and within- and between-study consistency can strengthen causal inference and generalizability.

There is a widespread dissatisfaction among nonprofit leaders and managers, private funders and public decision-makers concerning the current systems of social impact assessment of nonprofit organizations/social enterprises (NPO/SE).The systems of performance measurement of NPO/SE vary greatly in relationship to a series of endogenous and exogenous variables related to different organizational environments: economic, political, social and cultural.The aim of this article is to present an innovative theoretical framework on the basis of which it is possible to define a set of indicators for the evaluation of the social added value produced by NPO/SE.Our hypothesis is that NPO/SE are characterized by their ability to generate different outcome at each of the dimensions of social life: micro, meso and macro. Meaning, a sense of responsibility at the micro level; relational goods at the meso level; and social capital at the macro level.The article illustrates the assessment tool called S.A.V.E. applied, as empirical reference, to three Italian social enterprises operating in the field of health and social services (local welfare systems).

Social service agencies face increasing demands for accountability, emphasizing the necessity of preparing professionals to effectively evaluate practice. University-agency collaborations incorporating service learning can build community research capacity while providing opportunities for application of student research skills. We describe a partnership model between a Master of Social Work program evaluation course and a mobile psychiatric rehabilitation program to design a formative evaluation. Course structure and tasks central to the management of the partnership are described. Agency staff benefited from access to peer-reviewed literature, introduction to standardized assessment instruments, and stimulation of staff discussion and critical thinking around service provision. Students valued the applied research experience including exposure to the agency context and a real-world impact of their work. Lessons learned and implications for university-agency collaborations are discussed.

The Stricto Sensu Graduate Programs in the Professional modality, as well as the Master's Program in Health Promotion at the Centro Universitário Adventista de São Paulo (UNASP), are committed to presenting social, scientific and technological relevance in the processes of professional training. This article aims to investigate the biannual result of the evaluation process in a Professional Master's Degree in Health Promotion carried out by the Self-Assessment Committee. In 2020 and 2021, questionnaires formulated based on CAPES evaluation guidelines were sent to graduates of the Master's degree in Health Promotion. The graduates responded and sent their responses to the survey via email, which were statistically analyzed from the graduates' perspective on the quality experienced in the Stricto Sensu Graduate Program in the Program, Training and Impact on Society dimensions. The Self-Assessment questionnaires were applied electronically in 2020 and 2021, with the respective feedback organized by the Self-Assessment Commission in 2021 and 2022. The results show a significant increase in the proportion of technical and technological productions - from regular to good and from good to very good were p=0.004 and p=0.003, respectively. We understand, therefore, that the evaluation process subsidizes reflections and changes in the direction of qualitative results agreed upon by all.

ABSTRACTNursing home aides are the primary care providers for the institutionalized elderly but, until recently, aides have received very little formal training. Recognizing this, some community colleges have implemented in-service training programs. This paper presents the results of an impact assessment of the Saskatchewan program offered by Kelsey Institute of Applied Arts and Science. The sample included 86 aides from 16 nursing homes selected at random from both rural and urban areas. Results from this study show that program graduates knew significantly more about simple nursing skills, the aging process, and the philosophy of long term care in comparison to aides from nursing homes that did not offer this in-service training (non-participants). Program graduates were also significantly more likely to describe their health care team as functioning effectively. However, attitudes of program graduates toward the elderly were not significantly different from non-participants. The vast majority of the aides, whether trained or untrained, held positive attitudes toward the elderly. Implications and limitations of these results are discussed in conjunction with information from interviews with three Directors of Care who have experience implementing and supervising this in-service training program.

Abstract Brazil lacks an Occupational Therapy methodology of action, justifying the cross-cultural adaptation of TAP. Objectives were to adapt TAP reference materials to the Brazilian culture and evaluation of the applicability of the Portuguese version by perceptions of Occupational Therapists (OT) and family caregivers. The methodology used translation, back translation, evaluation of semantic, idiomatic, conceptual and cultural equivalences and pre-test of materials for production in Portuguese. The OT applied the translated version and evaluated its applicability. Caregivers evaluated the social impact of the adapted program. The cross-cultural adaptation process adapted the entire materials program to Portuguese culture. The OT perception is a need to include one session to guide caregivers and to modify the cognitive assessment used. The caregivers pointed out that TAP helps them in understanding and caring for the elderly with dementia. The TAP-BR has been adapted to the Brazilian culture. Part of a symposium sponsored by the Behavioral Interventions for Older Adults Interest Group.

This article describes the development and use of a rapid evaluation approach to meet program accountability and learning requirements in a research for development program operating in five developing countries. The method identifies clusters of outcomes, both expected and unexpected, happening within areas of change. In a workshop, change agents describe the causal connections within outcome clusters to identify outcome trajectories for subsequent verification. Comparing verified outcome trajectories with existing program theory allows program staff to question underlying causal premises and adapt accordingly. The method can be used for one-off evaluations that seek to understand whether, how, and why program interventions are working. Repeated cycles of outcome evidencing can build a case for program contribution over time that can be evaluated as part of any future impact assessment of the program or parts of it.

Main problem: One of the officially recognized problems of the system of state planning and regional development is imperfection of the methodology for assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of the implementation of the activities of state bodies. In fact, there is no assessment of economic and social efficiency and an assessment of the impact on society. In this regard, the authors have developed methodological approaches to assessing the quality (effectiveness) of state programs (on the example of the program of the Republic of Kazakhstan “Employment Roadmap – 2020”) is urgent task for theory and practice of regional development. The purpose of the research is the investigation of the methodological foundations for evaluating the quality of implementation of state programs of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the field of employment (based on the materials of program of the Republic of Kazakhstan “Employment Roadmap 2020”). Methods: The article uses a systematic approach to solving problems that ensures the unity of qualitative and quantitative methods: qualitative content analysis; a monographic method; the method of economic and statistical research. Results and their value: The value of the study lies in the fact that methodological approaches to the evaluation of programs in the public administration system are identified. For an economic assessment involving the calculation and analysis of unit costs per program participant, the authors propose to conduct dynamic and comparative analysis of the values of unit costs for achieving final results in directions of“DKZ-2020” program. This will allow to compare individual projects and program areas by costs in dynamics and further to identify those factors that work for their unjustified growth. The calculation of presented indicators is also important in regional context, since it allows considering those regions that significantly deviate from the national values in one direction or another.

Introduction Engagement in meaningful everyday life occupations is linked to well-being. However, people with dementia are often deprived of engagement. As a response, a Danish Dementia Town was established with the intention of transforming care services to improve opportunities for meaningful engagement. The evidence-based The meaningful occupational engagement intervention for people with dementia (MOED) intervention was developed and implemented in dementia town to enhance meaningful occupational engagement. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the content, impact and implementation process of MOED. Method To evaluate MOED, we applied a program theory-based qualitative approach, building on participant observations and informal conversations with people with dementia ( n = 7) and staff ( n = 9). Data were analysed from a hermeneutic approach to gain an in-depth understanding of how MOED influenced meaningful occupational engagement and to evaluate the implementation process. Findings The main theme ‘Engagement in meaningful occupations – a conditional and fragile process’ emerged along with three subthemes: ‘Creating an everyday space of meaning: Conditions of the intervention’, ‘Occupational engagement as an opportunity to blossom: Impact of the intervention’ and ‘Professional identity, culture and reflections: Contextual barriers to changes to working practice’. Together, the subthemes illustrate how engagement in meaningful occupations arose. However, opportunities to engage in meaningful occupations were fragile, as they depended on various factors within the context. Conclusion Engagement in meaningful occupations emerged when MOED was applied in accordance with the program theory, as it seemed to create spaces where people with dementia could engage in meaningful occupations and they could blossom over time. However, MOED was only partially implemented in accordance with the developed program theory, as several contextual barriers influenced the sustainability of the intervention. MOED showed potential to support improvement in dementia care activity programmes to enhance opportunities to engage in meaningful occupations in everyday life for people living with dementia.

Economic activities developed in the framework of sustainable development concept have to ensure balanced economic and technological development without weakening the social and natural environmental conditions. Environmental impact assessment using ecological footprint method helps to choose sustainable economic activities and technologies which are appropriate to sustainable development concept and has less impact to environment. This method is usually used as a public ecological and environmental educational tool and sometimes applied for creation of measures and programs for sustainable regional and economic development. The research problem is to determine whether the ecological footprint method is an appropriate tool to measure environmental impact of agricultural entities in accordance with sustainable development aspects. The paper aim is to evaluate the cereal farms using sustainable process index which is a member of ecological footprint method. The analysis was performed by analyzing the cereal farms which are growing wheat, rye and oats crops in Austria and Lithuania. The calculation was carried out using SPIonExcel software program. The results showed that the most significant environmental impacts arise from the use of fertilizers and the use of agricultural machinery (tractors and harvesters and the biggest share from the total ecological footprint goes to the pollution of air and water. The research also showed that if the ecological footprint method is used with a support service this can be a useful instrument for farmers showing how to improve farming from the ecological viewpoint and how to increase energy efficiency and reduce the use of primary resources.

The after-school period of older primary school-aged children was used to examine how the social construct of childhood is being shaped and how it changes over time. With studies on childhood still relatively new academic terrain, this research makes a contribution by identifying some key structural and social forces impacting upon childhood. This research investigated firstly how children spend their time in the after-school period, secondly the reasons why they do so, and thirdly parental and child understandings and opinions on this subject. Childhood was found to be differentially constructed by socioeconomic backgrounds, and mediated by employment status. Results suggest that increasing parental employment accompanied concerns over safety for children and the need to protect them. This meant that there was a tendency for families to mediate between the child and wider society through increased surveillance of children. For one-parent families this took the form of supervision of children through after-school programmes. Two-parent families, who were more able to organise their work arrangements so that one parent was home after-school, monitored their children's activities within localised areas based around the home. Parental 'risk anxiety' was seen to be shaping the lives of children in terms of defining safe places and spaces for them. Children themselves tended to prefer informal, unstructured activities within these contexts, and did not seem too concerned about safety issues.

Museums have been working with communities of place, practice and interest for many years to preserve tangible and intangible cultural heritage, develop research collections and create exhibitions or events. However, in an environment of increased social and economic accountability, many cultural institutions are now re-examining the relevance of their activities and are reflecting on the ways in which they include communities in their programs. This thesis considers the correlation between participatory theory and principles and the methods Australian museums use to work with and engage communities. In particular, it seeks to explore why museum outreach activities, as the dominant medium for extended community engagement initiatives within museums, have not engaged more fully with interdisciplinary participatory models, particularly those utilised by natural resource management (NRM) practitioners. The thesis explores the difference between the concept of engagement and the concept of participation and uses a case study approach to reflect on how these are practiced and understood in the museum milieu. Using outreach projects with a socio-environmental and NRM focus, I suggest that the integration of participatory principles and practices has the potential to increase the capacity of museums and communities to actively contribute to a range of contemporary social issues and debates. Implicit in this research is an understanding that consultation gives rise to, but is not equivalent to, participation; that participatory approaches and relationship building are at once time consuming and yet can be expedient; and that while not applicable to every museum project, participatory approaches can inspire interaction, empowerment and creativity in worlds including and beyond museums. By exploring these dimensions in relation to interdisciplinary approaches, and using the examples and case studies explored throughout the thesis, this dissertation provides museum practitioners with a spectrum/methodology to help advocate for and/or integrate community engagement strategies into project development.

This feminist project explores the experiential accounts of twenty-five women who have lived through abuse within their intimate relationships. Their stories, gathered through a series of semi-structured face-to-face interviews intended to elicit accounts of resilience were saturated with emotion-talk, especially shame-talk. To address questions of the relationship between these accounts and theoretical accounts of abuse, and shame the women’s texts were engaged in an analytic dialogue with feminist knowledges of abuse against women, Erving Goffman’s sociological understandings of shame, stigma and mortification of the self, Thomas Scheff’s sociological theory of shame and social bonds, and feminist poststructuralist understandings around the constitution of human subjectivity. These conversations enabled development of a conceptual representation of the special and highly specific form of social bonding experienced by victims of abuse within intimate relationships. This bonding begins with processes of mortification of the self, the gradual erosion of a sense of self through the systematic imposition of various shaming and shameful actions. These processes take place within a specific social context created through the constitutive power of dominant discourses of gender, heterosexual coupledom, matrimony and motherhood which work to shape the lives of individual women. Because of the specific ways in which these discourses currently operate within Aotearoa New Zealand they result in the constitution of a narrow range of tightly prescribed subject positions available to victims of intimate partner abuse. This analysis leads to an argument that women’s inability to ‘do’ motherhood or intimate partnership in line with dominant discourses of mothering and relationships (because these simply cannot be achieved within an abusive context), opens them to the debilitating effects of shame. Shame, both actual and threatened, promotes silence, isolation and dangerous private spaces as women seek to protect themselves from its painful experience. I argue that it is therefore crucial to promote the availability of discursive positioning for women living through abuse which offers non-shaming and realistic choices.

[This Proceedings paper was revised and published in the 2019 issue of the journal Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, Volume 16] Aim/purpose The purpose of this article is to discuss the psychosocial and emotional outcomes of an introductory health science workshop designed to support and assist incoming health science students before starting their university study. Background For the past two decades, a South Australian university offered an on-campus face to face workshop titled ‘Preparation for Health Sciences’ to incoming first-year students from eleven allied health programs such as Nursing, Physiotherapy and Medical Imaging. While many were locals, a good number came from regional and rural areas, and many were international students also. They consisted of both on-campus and off-campus students. The workshop was created as a new learning environment that was available for students of diverse age groups, educational and cultural backgrounds to prepare them to study sciences. The content of the four-day workshop was developed in consultation with the program directors of the allied health programs. The objectives were to: introduce the assumed foundational science knowledge to undertake health sciences degree; gain confidence in approaching science subjects; experience lectures and laboratory activities; and become familiar with the University campus and its facilities. The workshop was delivered a week before the orientation week, before first-year formal teaching weeks. The topics covered were enhancing study skills, medical and anatomical terminology, body systems, basic chemistry and physics, laboratory activities, and assessment of learning. Methodology In order to determine the outcomes of the workshop, a survey was used requiring participants to agree or disagree about statements concerning the preparatory course and answer open-ended questions relating to the most important information learned and the best aspects of the workshop. Several students piloted this questionnaire before use in order to ascertain the clarity of instructions, terminology and statements. The result of the 2015-2018 pre- and post-evaluation showed that the workshop raised confidence and enthusiasm in commencing university and that the majority considered the workshop useful overall. The findings of the survey are drawn upon to examine the psychosocial and emotional impacts of the workshop on participants. Using secondary qualitative analysis, the researchers identified the themes relating to the psychosocial and emotional issues conveyed by the participants. Contribution The contributions of the article are in the areas of improving students’ confidence to complete their university degrees and increasing the likelihood of academic success. Findings Of the 285 students who participated in the workshops from 2015 to 2018, 166 completed the survey conducted at the conclusion of the initiative, representing a 58% response rate. The workshops achieved the objectives outlined at the outset. While there were many findings reported (Thalluri, 2016), the results highlighted in this paper relate to the psychosocial and emotional impacts of the workshop on students. Three themes emerged, and these were Increased preparedness and confidence; Networking and friendships that enhanced support, and Reduced anxiety to study sciences. Some drawbacks were also reported including the cost, time and travel involved. Recommendations for practitioners Students found the introductory workshop to be psychosocially and emotionally beneficial. It is recommended that the same approach be applied for teaching other challenging fields such as mathematics and physics within the university and in other contexts and institutions. Recommendations for researchers Improving and extending the workshop to provide greater accessibility and autonomy is recommended. A longitudinal study to follow up the durability of the workshop is also proposed. Impact on society The impacts in the broader community include: higher academic success for students; improved mental health due to social networking and friendship groups and reduced anxiety and fear; reduced dropout rate in their first year; greater potential to complete educational degrees; reduced wastage in human and financial resources; and increased human capital. Future research Addressing the limitations of cost, time and travel involved, and following-up with the participants’ academic and workplace performance are future directions for research.