I am Abraham Wandersman, past-president of the American Psychological Association Division 27 – Community Psychology. I am also a professor of psychology at the University of South Carolina at Columbia. David Fetterman and I have worked together on empowerment evaluation issues, articles, and books for over 17 years. We would like to share a few tips, tools, and resources with you based on our experience.
We are using Getting to Outcomes, an empowerment evaluation approach, in Richland School District TWO in South Carolina. The project is complex and involves providing every student in grades 3-12 with a mobile computing device (e.g., iPad, Chrome book). We are watching people use a new tool for the first time in order to clarify their goals, objectives, and ways of measuring what they do in the district. Getting to Outcomes has been a useful tool to channel this excitement and enthusiasium into productive activity and results.
Rad Resource – Further Details: Read more about our use of Getting to Outcomes in the Richland School District Two here on the Empowerment Evaluation Blog.
Rad Resource – Getting to outcomes: 10 Steps for Achieving Results-Based Accountability: This report from the Rand Corporation provides step-by-step guidance on the Getting to Outcomes process.
Rad Resource – Evaluation Improvement: A Seven-step Empowerment Evaluation Approach: This guide from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides guidance on hiring empowerment evaluators.
Rad Resources – Recommended Books:
Fetterman, D.M. and Wandersman, A. (2005). Empowerment evaluation principles in practice. New York: Guilford Publications.
Fetterman, D.M., Kaftarian, S., and Wandersman, A. (1996). Empowerment evaluation: knowledge and tools for self-evaluation and accountability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
The American Evaluation Association is celebrating CPE week with our colleagues in the Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment TIG. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our CPE TIG Colleagues. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice.