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This article proposes a complexity-informed framework for evaluating transportation infrastructure projects. The article does this through four steps. First, the properties of infrastructure development projects are discussed. This leads to the conclusion that the specific locality or contextualization of a given project is important for explaining the outcome. Hence, there is a need for an ontology and epistemology that addresses the importance of this contextualization. The second step concerns the development of the prerequisites for a methodological framework that follows from this epistemology and ontology. The third step is the assessment of common infrastructure evaluation methods against these prerequisites. This leads to the conclusion that a comparative case-based approach is the most suitable way to study the relationship between context and outcomes in projects. A framework based on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is presented in the fourth step. The article concludes with a discussion of the further development of QCA.

This article proposes a method of evaluating effect, impact and efficiency of treatment using the standardized mean difference (SMD) of outcomes between the treatment and the control groups. Since the SMD is commensurable (divisible and measurable by a common standard), here it is given a unit name 'effect' as an expression of the 'standardized effect'. Based on the assumption that impact is the sum total of the change brought about by the treatment in the population, this article asserts that impact can be calculated by multiplying the 'standardized effect' by the population under treatment given that the sample represents the population. Extending this logic, efficiency can be calculated by dividing the impact by the total input of the treatment expressed in a monetary value. An example of the application of this approach to the evaluation of Japan's Foreign Student Policy toward Thailand is introduced and its merits and limitations are discussed.

Models that shift more responsibility onto researchers for the process of incorporating research results into decision-making have greatly gained in popularity during the past two decades. This shift has created a new area of research to identify the best ways to transfer academic results into the organizational and political arenas. However, evaluating the utilization of information coming out of a knowledge transfer (KT) initiative remains an enormous challenge. This article demonstrates how logic analysis has proven to be a useful evaluation method to assess the utilization potential of KT initiatives. We present the case of the evaluation of the Research Collective on the Organization of Primary Care Services, an innovative experiment in knowledge synthesis and transfer. The conclusions focus not only on the utilization potential of results coming out of the Research Collective, but also on the theoretical framework used, in order to facilitate its application to the evaluation of other knowledge transfer initiatives.

Ever increasing demands are being made on welfare organizations to display efficiency. Evaluation workshops constitute a form of learning for the purposes of building up competence to conduct evaluations within welfare organizations, with the support of research and development units. In workshops of this kind, welfare work professionals meet in order to conduct evaluations together with researchers/professional evaluators.This article presents experiences from 10 such evaluation workshops conducted in western Sweden.The workshops were perceived very positively by the participants. While the evaluations are being conducted, the participants also develop a more general competence in this field.The evaluations conducted at the workshops are primarily internal, but with external support, with all the limitations this involves in relation to the possibilities for critical scrutiny. Evaluation workshops have a beneficial effect on the learning of evaluation methods by directly combining learning and conducting evaluation. The workshops may also serve to build capacity in the organizations for evaluative work.

This article describes and discusses a case of deliberative responsive stakeholder evaluation that was employed as a strategy to support the development of an undergraduate medical programme at a Swedish university. It focuses on received information and reflection about the process of evaluation as a dialogue for learning. By highlighting the complexity of educational work and the expectations on the medical profession, the dialogue supported a holistic and qualification-focused change process. The dialogue contributed to the creation of a qualified and nuanced development process and illuminated an evaluation process that is more associated with learning than quality enhancement. The article begins by presenting the case studied and the theories that underpin the article. It then describes the results of the study, before finally placing the results in the context of higher education development in Sweden and raising issues relating to the present method and objectives of quality assessment in higher education.

Information systems (IS) planning is a developing field, and currently organizations plan and implement systems that enable them to transcend traditional boundaries. However, the issue of how individuals and groups can influence the process and outcomes of organizational IS planning with their own concerns still needs further attention. This paper presents an approach to IS planning that facilitates inclusion and participation of people. The focus of planning remains the organization, but critical thinking is developed through reflection on wider (e.g. individual and societal) concerns. Using Critical Systems Thinking (CST) and the theories of boundary critique and autopoiesis, the approach in this paper emphasizes continuous inclusion of, and reflection on, different issues of concern, values and interests that groups of stakeholders have about their situation prior to the selection, design and implementation of planning methods. Reflections from practice can lead practitioners to consider the importance of ethics in information systems planning.

In 1996, Icelandic schools were mandated to evaluate their work.This article focuses on four schools that were selected for this case study, two primary schools and two secondary schools.They all received support from two researchers: one from Central Connecticut State University and another from the University of Iceland.These researchers coached school-evaluation teams in their self-evaluation efforts and assessed change in the schools. The schools received empowerment-based support, where the researchers taught staff to evaluate school work and take responsibility for development based on outcomes from longitudinal data collection and dissemination of evaluation information. Researcher findings include changes in teacher perceptions of administration facilitating their professional growth; systematic data collection; teacher ownership and collaboration; and shared decision-making for improvement efforts in the schools. Findings were triangulated, using different data collection methods. Results indicate that evaluation worked best when schools took a democratic stance. Program fidelity was an indication of improvement within the schools.

Participatory evaluation methodologies are considered to produce many positive and empowering impacts. However, given the complex power, knowledge and discursive issues involved and other factors, use of these methodologies can have contradictory effects. This article presents results from the implementation of a process that aimed to build the capacities of people in two Australian rural communities to evaluate their local communication and information technology (C&IT) initiatives. The 'LEARNERS' process used participatory action research and participatory evaluation methods, and took an inclusive 'whole of community' approach. The process aimed to enhance community development and to facilitate community empowerment, participation and leadership, particularly for women. Rigorous analysis of the impacts of the project found that it was effective in producing various degrees of social, technological, political and psychological empowerment. However, some corresponding disempowering impacts were also identified. The strengths and limitations of this evaluation capacity-building process and the lessons learned are considered.

Mental Health Link - a facilitated programme - aimed to develop systems within primary care and links with specialists to improve care for patients with long-term mental illness. A process evaluation based on Pawson and Tilley's Realistic Evaluation complemented a randomized controlled trial. This article describes the method developed for this 'realistic evaluation', the mechanisms behind the integration of linked specialist workers and discusses practical and theoretical issues arising from the use of the realistic evaluation framework as a way of explaining the results of trials and service development. Retrospective interviews identified the important outcomes and were used to construct 'Context-Mechanism-Outcome' configurations. The 12 case studies represented what had happened. A second-level analysis using analytic induction developed 'middle range theories' designed to be of value to those developing care elsewhere. The intervention was successful in stimulating productive joint working, through case discussions, but often failed to ensure a review of progress.

Research demonstrates that certain crime prevention techniques work. Accordingly, current evaluations focus on what works and where. One of the key elements in assessing crime prevention success is determining the number of crimes prevented. This allows the cost-effectiveness of schemes to be assessed and different schemes to be meaningfully compared. Evaluation studies of what works include a variety of different approaches, some more robust than others. The current article presents two methods for calculating the outcomes of crime prevention interventions. The basic principle behind both approaches involves subtracting the observed number of crimes from an estimate of the number of crimes that would have occurred had the scheme not existed. Importantly, it is acknowledged that area crime rates are influenced both by general trends and more random factors. Thus, each approach produces a range of estimates to attempt to assess the impact of more random influences.

An important task for policy evaluation is to develop methods that are based on the fact that political power is fragmented and that every policy area is complex. This article demonstrates, using an empirical example, how different strands of the policymaking process are related to different logics of evaluation. Also discussed is how these differences may result in quite opposite conclusions about the possible failure or success of single programmes. However, it is concluded that policy research does not have to abandon the idea of rationality and adopt a more postmodern or hermeneutic line of analysis. Policy evaluation is still, it is argued, a matter of finding relevant units of analysis, and in contemporary society these units are networks rather than political–administrative entities. Thus, in order to be able to scrutinize and understand such processes of policy creation, policy evaluation must adopt a non-hierarchical attitude and this requires a bottom-up methodology.

Trying to build political dimensions into evaluation has blurred the distinction between policy analysis and policy evaluation. We do not dispute the importance of political context and values for evaluation or policy analysis, but we argue that evaluation and policy analysis are indeed different by definition, function and methodology. These differences are widely known but increasingly disregarded, especially at the stage of the presentation of findings. Evaluation tends to adopt the stance of the analyst in that it is being urged to make recommendations on policy choices within the narrow scope of answers based on evaluation questions, without the benefit of additional contextual information. The article compares policy evaluation and policy analysis in terms of conceptualization, research methods, problem definition and data presentation and argumentation. In presenting the differences between evaluation and analysis, we point to the dangers inherent in a lack of awareness of where the boundaries lie and what purpose they serve.

AbstractThe first purpose of this article is to describe the steps for conducting a simple evaluation (usable in a variety of different types of courses and programs). The second purpose is to report results from an evaluation of the ICONS Computer-Assisted Simulation, designed to teach both international concepts and content (declarative knowledge) and negotiation strategies and skills (procedural knowledge) to university students. Several techniques are described, including rating scales, open-ended questions scored for elaboration, concept maps, and computer-assisted data collection. Two groups of students differing in type of participation were identified in the evaluation of the ICONS simulation. The first (and largest group) became highly involved in the program and valued learning from the innovative technology used; the second (and much smaller group) was less involved and preferred learning from traditional methods such as lectures and reading. Notes about tactics and decisions involved in planning and implementing the evaluation are included.

Concerning the Middle Ages it is difficult to distinguish between political theory and the more comprehensive although somewhat vague, ideas of political orientation. The area of political acting was by no means clearly defined. The formation of a political theory in the Middle Ages started relatively late. Political theory took the same road as all the other theoretical attempts in medieval society. The first universities began to spread in a homogenous progress all over Europe. From that time scholasticism provided the unchallenged methodical ideal and the pattern for any systematic thinking. In spite of the differences of faculties, the methods of learning were altogether observed by everyone contributing to in the development of theories. Yet conditions were more difficult in the field of political theory because it was not a discipline of its own from the beginning. It had never been at the cathedral schools and the monasteries in pre-university times, and it took a long time before political theory established itself as an autonomous field of studies. In the Middle Ages nobody could have had the idea that political theory was only possible by way of a single method, faculty or by one tradition alone. Several established disciplines were competing with one another in delivering their own contributions without excluding the others. Thus political theories were being occupied by different strings of humanities and sciences, and yet none of the disciplines alone could claim to be the only one responsible for political theory. Indeed all the authors of the late Middle Ages dealing with political theory show in their treatises the process and speed of this occupation by the sciences.

The aim of the article is the media and political analysis of the political discourse of German Chancellor Angela Merkel regarding refugees, launched by the famous slogan Wir schaffen das! The time study covers the period from 31.08.2015 to 28.02.2017. The author uses the system analysis method and the content analysis method. The research material is the texts published on the "Wirtualna Polska" portal. ; Celem artykułu jest analiza medioznawcza i politologiczna dyskursu politycznego kanclerz Niemiec, Angeli Merkel, dotyczącego uchodźców, zapoczątkowanego słynnym sloganem Wir schaffen das! Czas badań obejmuje okres od 31.08.2015 do 28.02.2017. Autor wykorzystuje metodę analizy systemowej oraz metodę analizy zawartości. Materiał badawczy stanowią teksty opublikowane na portalu "Wirtualna Polska".