Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Program Evaluation”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 991 records · Page 55Linked to original sources
PubMed1977

Computer program for evaluation, physicochemical characterization and optimization of competitive protein binding assays: comparison of four curve-fitting models in peptide and steroid radioimmunoassays.

A modular construced computer program for evaluation, physicochemical characterization and optimization of compititive protein binding assays is put forward. The program allows standard curve fitting by the following models: spline approximation, semi-logarithmic interpolation, logit-log regression and logit-log interpolation. The suitability of these models was studied in a series of routine steroid radioimmunoassays (deoxycorticosterone, deoxycortisol, cortisol and aldosterone) and peptide radioimmunoassays (angiotensin I and angiotensin II). The spline approximation model was used as an approximate reference model. In all assays the logit-log interpolation model exhibited the best correlation with the spline approximation model. In the steroid assays the logit-log regression model was found to be inferior to the other models; in the peptide assays it was equal to or superior to the semi-logarithmic interpolation model. The study on the physicochemical parameters of the antigen-antibody reactions demonstrated that affinity of steroid antibodies was much lower than that of the peptide antibodies. Consequently the degree of antibody saturation at zero dose in the routine peptide assays was greater than 50% and in the routine steroid assays was less than 50%. The relationship of assay characteristics to the applicability of particular curve-fitting models is discussed.

Adrenal Cortex Hormones↗
PubMed1996

Responding to juvenile crime: lessons learned.

Although the dispositional options for delinquent youths have diversified over the past 20 years, the debate about the most effective treatment of young offenders continues. This article reviews the existing evaluations of various juvenile corrections alternatives. In contrast to the conclusions of scholars in the late 1970s that "nothing worked" in juvenile corrections, Mark Lipsey's 1992 meta-analysis of more than 400 evaluations of juvenile programs reported an average 10% improvement in recidivism rates for all the programs evaluated. Lipsey's meta-analysis found a significant advantage in community-based programs run by private providers compared with large custodial institutions, such as traditional state training schools. The most effective privately run community programs have high levels of intensity and duration, multiple modes of intervention, and a great deal of structure. Nonresidential, dawn-to-dusk educational programs that work with both juveniles and their families are good examples of this type of programming. Boot camps for juvenile offenders have proliferated because of their political popularity. A recent evaluation of eight of these programs showed that four had no effect on recidivism, one resulted in higher recidivism rates, and three showed improvements in some recidivism measures. Probation and diversion, the most common of all juvenile court dispositions, are not effective options for youths with multiple risk factors. Juvenile courts need an array of dispositional options, the ability to monitor program effectiveness, and the flexibility to find the appropriate placement for each juvenile offender.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Evaluating community-based health professions education programs.

This paper assumes the reader (1) has little knowledge about program evaluation, and (2) is interested in evaluation to improve a community-based health professions education program. There are other important and useful approaches that can be used to address an evaluation of a community-based health professions education program, and readers are encouraged to explore them--they appear in health education, public health education, in evaluation, and in program theory literature. The paper is organized around a group of questions as a reference or organizer for the reader. These include topics like why evaluation is wanted, what kinds of questions can be addressed through evaluation, who stakeholders are, who should conduct the evaluation, what methods can be used, and how to analyze data and report results from the evaluation. In the paper, I have attempted to include examples that are related to community-based health professions programs. Finally, the paper ends with the recognition that there is much more to learn in the field of evaluation and suggestions for ways to continue pursuit of knowledge in this topical area.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2005

The NIOSH Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program: a New York case study illustrating the impact of a farm manure pump PTO entanglement.

The New York Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program is designed to identify and study fatal occupational injuries in New York State. The New York FACE program is supported by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and administered by the New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH) in cooperation with Cornell University. New York FACE investigators evaluate information from multiple sources, conduct objective on-site investigations, and then summarize their findings in narrative reports that include recommendations for preventing similar events in the future. These recommendations are distributed to employers, workers, and other organizations as an educational tool for promoting workplace safety. The following case study involved a 53-year-old dairy farm owner who was fatally injured while transferring manure from an underground storage pit to a manure lagoon. At the time of the incident, the farmer was utilizing a manure pump that was connected to a tractor via a power take-off (PTO) shaft. The farmer reached across the unshielded PTO shaft in order to operate a hand crank that adjusted the manure pump chute. As he did this, his clothing became entangled in the PTO shaft, wrapping the farmer's body around the shaft. New York FACE investigators concluded that to help prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future: PTO-powered equipment should not be operated unless the PTO shield is in place and in good condition; Power to equipment should be turned off prior to making mechanical adjustments; Manure handling systems should be designed to facilitate operator safety; Farm workers should be healthy and well rested prior to performing hazardous activities and; Dairy farm workers should be trained in manure handling safety and knowledgeable about other manure hazards.

Accidents, Occupational↗
PubMed2003

Economic evaluation of programs or interventions in the management of rheumatoid arthritis: defining a consensus-based reference case.

Improvement in the quality of economic evaluation could be documented as a consequence of international and national standardization efforts. One such effort is the recommendation that all economic evaluations in a given field produce findings in a standard format using a reference case. A reference case-based economic evaluation would adhere to specific settings with regard to outcomes, comparators, modeling techniques, and use of costs to facilitate comparisons among economic evaluations performed with the same objective. In the past, the Outcome Measures in Rheumatology Clinical Trials (OMERACT) consensus conference has successfully developed widely used, consensus-based outcome criteria for clinical improvement in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Present efforts are being directed at the development of recommendations for the type and format of a reference case economic evaluation for newly developed disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARD). This document discusses 13 important elements that experts considered to be relevant for the development of a reference case recommendation for economic evaluations in RA. We provide the rationale for each element and discuss how each element has been addressed in published economic evaluations of DMARD.

Antirheumatic Agents↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Evaluating liaison program effectiveness: the use of unobtrusive measurement.

The author suggests that the goal of liaison psychiatry as well as its organizational and clinical properties require the use of measures which are non-reactive and developmental in nature. In this paper four categories are theorized as representing the implicit working assumptions of nonpsychiatric housestaff in clinical formulation. By analyzing the overt and latent assumptions of the questions presented to a liaison psychiatrist in patient care conferences, the author illustrates how the assumptions can change through six levels of development. Changes within the assumptions are then used as criteria for program effectiveness since the working assumptions represent preconditions to holistic care. Potential uses of this global scheme for evaluating liaison programs are suggested.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1988

What do we really know about community support programs? Strategies for better monitoring.

Studies have shown that community support programs are more effective in treating the chronic mentally ill than traditional forms of aftercare. Yet an analysis of 33 controlled studies of community support programs reveals that almost no systematic empirical knowledge exists about their actual implementation, including the kinds of treatment they deliver, how they can be replicated, or what ingredients account for their success. As a result, dissemination of the community support program model has been slower than expected. Developing effective community support programs requires making a commitment to evaluating programs as they are implemented, identifying program variables to monitor, devising methods for monitoring the variables chosen, and drawing from and building on existing literature about program evaluation. Strategies and models for monitoring implementation of community support programs are described.

Aftercare↗
PubMed2006

Faculty development in end-of-life care: evaluation of a national train-the-trainer program.

To address serious deficiencies in physician training in end-of-life care, the authors developed and disseminated a faculty development curriculum. The overall goals of this curriculum were to enhance physician competence in end-of-life care, foster a commitment to improving care for the dying, and improve teaching related to end-of-life care. The authors provide descriptions of the curriculum and the train-the-trainer programs (2000-2002) that successfully prepared 17 medical faculty as in-house end-of-life care faculty developers at institutions nationwide. They also report on a study of the effects of the 16-hour, end-of-life care curriculum delivered by trained facilitators to 62 faculty and residents at their home sites. Program evaluation showed that the home-site seminars enhanced the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of participating faculty and residents. When project evaluation concluded in 2003, trained facilitators had disseminated the 16-hour curriculum as well as modified versions of the curriculum to approximately 3,400 medical teachers. An adapted version of the curriculum is available on the Internet for use in health professions education. The importance of this type of faculty development effort was confirmed by the positive impact of the 16-hour curriculum on participants' knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to end-of-life care, the high ratings of the program's educational and clinical relevance, and the finding that, on average, more than 50% of the material was new to them.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed2001

Subjective quality of life in the evaluation of programs for people with serious and persistent mental illness.

Despite the widespread application of the concept of quality of life in mental health evaluation, it has been observed that subjective quality of life measures do not reliably capture changes expected to result from intervention efforts. Moreover, because the domains selected to assess subjective life quality are typically generated by investigators or health professionals, the validity of subjective quality of life measures has also been questioned. Although it represents a conceptual shift from investigator-generated domains to client-elicited domains, it is suggested that a client-elicited approach to measuring subjective quality of life may provide fruitful avenues for resolving some of the conceptual and practical issues associated with understanding and measuring the impact of community-based programs on clients with serious mental illness. Accordingly, while acknowledging the utility of assessing the objective circumstances of people's lives, this paper suggests that client-elicited subjective quality of life domains have the potential to resolve the failure of existing measures to register meaningful change. Unlike previous general reviews of quality of life that have emphasized measurement issues, the present review considers some of the fundamental barriers to our ability to adequately understand and document the experiences of people adjusting to community living with a psychiatric disability.

Community Mental Health Services↗
PubMed2003

"If they don't ask about condoms, I just tell them": a descriptive case study of Latino lay health advisers' helping activities.

Health care practitioners have increasingly turned to lay health advisers (LHAs) to deliver health promotion and disease prevention supportive activities to underserved populations. Yet, published evaluations of the LHA programs or the manner in which LHAs deliver information are rare. An important aspect of program evaluation includes understanding the role of the LHA in the community as described by the LHAs in the field. The purpose of this article is to report the results of a component of a larger evaluation of an LHA program for preventing HIV/AIDS among recently immigrated Mexicans in North Carolina. Specifically, the authors use a descriptive case study design to report on the perceptions of the LHAs related to program objectives. The findings suggest that the LHAs are meeting the program objectives and are confident in their role as LHAs.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Awareness, use, and consequences of evaluation data in a community mental health center.

A major aspect of the effort of the Mental Health Systems Evaluation Project of the Northwest Denver Community Health Center's has involved studying the utilization of program evaluation data by community mental health center managers and clinicians. The intent of this effort was twofold: to assess the impact of program evaluation feedback in the community mental health center per se; and to investigate factors that influenced this impact. The impact of such input was assessed initially at the level of "subjective utility." Later attempts involved more extended or interactive forms of input and impact assessment. Basic findings to date suggest that program evaluation data are most likely to have impact when directed at the managers most closely involved with the service at issue, and when presented, preferably simply and personally, in ways that insure an understanding of the data and its implications by those receiving it.

Community Mental Health Centers↗
PubMed1999

Using cluster random assignment to measure program impacts. Statistical implications for the evaluation of education programs.

This article explores the possibility of randomly assigning groups (or clusters) of individuals to a program or a control group to estimate the impacts of programs designed to affect whole groups. This cluster assignment approach maintains the primary strength of random assignment--the provision of unbiased impact estimates--but has less statistical power than random assignment of individuals, which usually is not possible for programs focused on whole groups. To explore the statistical implications of cluster assignment, the authors (a) outline the issues involved, (b) present an analytic framework for studying these issues, and (c) apply this framework to assess the potential for using the approach to evaluate education programs targeted on whole schools. The findings suggest that cluster assignment of schools holds some promise for estimating the impacts of education programs when it is possible to control for the average performance of past student cohorts or the past performance of individual students.

Bias↗
PubMed2000

Promising community-level indicators for evaluating cardiovascular health-promotion programs.

Rigorous evaluation of community-based programs can be costly, particularly when a representative sample of all members of the community are surveyed in order to assess the impact of a program on individual health behavior. Community-level indicators (CLIs), which are based on observations of aspects of the community other than those associated with individuals, may serve to supplement individual-level measures in the evaluation of community-based programs or in some cases provide a lower-cost alternative to individual-level measures. Because they are often based on observations of the community environment, CLIs also provide a way of measuring environmental changes--often an intermediate goal of community-based programs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention convened a panel of experts knowledgeable about community-based program evaluation and cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention to develop a list of CLIs, and rate their feasibility, reliability and validity. The indicators developed by the panel covered tobacco use, physical activity, diet and a fourth group that were considered 'cross-cutting' because they related to all three behaviors. The indicators were subdivided into policy and regulation, information, environmental change, and behavioral outcome. For example, policy and regulation indicators included laws and ordinances on tobacco use, policies on physical education, and guidelines for menu and food preparation. These indicators provide a good starting point for communities interested in tracking CVD-related outcomes at the community level.

Cardiovascular Diseases↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Evaluating enrichment program study groups: academic outcomes, psychological outcomes, and variables influencing retention.

The purpose of this study was to describe and evaluate select aspects of an enrichment program (EP) for students who participated in peer mentor/tutor (PMT) led study groups throughout the semester. The evaluation addressed three areas related to the underlying conceptual framework: (1) academic outcomes; (2) psychological outcomes (satisfaction); and (3) variables influencing retention. Overall, study group participants achieved higher pass rates, lower withdrawal rates, and positive psychological outcomes (satisfaction). Students perceived that environmental variables were more influential than academic variables in influencing retention. Social integration variables were perceived as greatly supportive. Implications for nurse educators are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Application of a mixed model approach for assessment of interventions and evaluation of programs.

Many social programs and programs for prevention of drug use are designed to affect a wide variety of targets, including individuals, families and neighborhoods, and organizations such as schools, companies, or hospitals. The nature of the intervention and the design of the particular study determine the choice of the appropriate unit of analysis in assessments of outcome. When the units of assignment and units of observation differ from one another, that is, when clusters of persons rather than persons are assigned at random to treatments, analyses performed at lower levels in the study hierarchy provide inefficient estimates of parameters and often lead to inappropriate significance tests. The present goal was to illustrate the applications of linear mixed models for evaluating statistically the effectiveness of programs.

Alcoholism↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The UCLA reading and writing program: an evaluation of the beginning stages.

Some individuals with developmental disabilities fail to acquire functional speech despite extensive teaching efforts. To help such individuals develop functional communication skills, a "reading and writing" program was developed. This study was designed to evaluate early parts of the program. Acquisition, transfer, and maintenance of "reading and writing" skills was examined and compared with the acquisition, transfer, and maintenance of sign language. Participants were four children with autism, who scored within the mentally retarded range on standardized tests of intellectual, adaptive, and language functioning, and three 3-year-old non-disabled children. A simultaneous-treatment design was employed to compare the rate of acquisition of "reading and writing" skills to the rate at which the participants acquired receptive and expressive signs. For the participants with autism, acquisition of "reading and writing" was more successful than receptive and expressive signing on all variables assessed. All non-disabled participants acquired all of the "reading and writing" and sign language skills, but participants with autism did not. However, "reading" was acquired slightly quicker by the participants with autism than the non-disabled participants, and the participants with autism also showed some evidence of better transfer and maintenance than the non-disabled participants did.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1992

APL program for evaluation of heat processes for spherical foods.

The present program solves the heat transfer equations for spherical foods by a numerical procedure that uses the Crank-Nicolson method. The program is implemented for conditions with as few restrictions as possible to enhance versatility. The results agree with the analytical solutions for two particular cases of boundary conditions. The program also computes the thermal effect in the foodstuff from the temperature data obtained by the numerical program.

Algorithms↗