HPM1C: Evaluation - Research Paper Example

The audiences for this research are sponsors, donors, client-groups, administrators, staff, and other relevant constituencies. Several strategies are used to evaluate these objects by asking questions and addressing them. Evaluation is the systematic acquisition and assessment of information to provide useful feedback about some object. Evaluation determines value, impact and worth of something or someone with use of certain method against a set standard. These objects can be as diverse as smoking interventions, after-school programs for adolescents, two police patrolling strategies, helicopter patrol in high crime areas, polio vaccination, recruitment and retention of general practitioner in rural areas, hospital mortality, Medicaid program, telemonitoring for heart failure management by mobile-phones, or internet based cognitive behavioral therapy, just to name a few.

When such programs are delivered, systematic, empirical inquiry for program evaluation becomes a necessary adjunct to program delivery. Evaluation is an essential tool for making development programs successful. Measuring and documenting success in attaining program goals and objectives are even more important to the audience of these objects. Such evaluation research usually takes place within a political and organizational context, and hence requires group skills, management ability, political dexterity, sensitivity to multiple stakeholders and other skills (Research Methods, 2006).

The findings from evaluations focus on the strengths and weaknesses of various aspects of the program as well of their overall ‘outcome’. This information is, in turn, used to consider how such object might be modified, enhanced or even eliminated in the effort to provide a better service, fulfill a particular need or meet a specific challenge. The goal of evaluating a research is to provide useful information or feedback to influence decision making or policy formulation. The ultimate goal for research evaluation is to select through different programs, incorporate changes and fine tune the resources.

On personal note, evaluation research is to determine whether the program is delivered as intended to the targeted recipients. Depending upon the object being evaluated and the purpose of the evaluation, there are two types of evaluation, formative and summative evaluation. When a cook tastes and gives his opinion on the soup being cooked, it is a formative evaluation, but when several guests taste the soup, it becomes summative evaluation. Formative evaluation is done during the program development and its implementation and tells how best to achieve the goals.

Formative evaluation pays special attention to the delivery and the quality of intervention system. Summative evaluations are done once the program is well established and to see to what extent the program is achieving its goals. Summative evaluation looks at the effect of an object after its delivery with an aim to see the impact of the object, long term effects of the object and the cost effectiveness of the object. There are several methods of evaluation research. They can be scientific and experimental methods, qualitative methods and participant-oriented models.

Scientific-experimental methods are objective based researches driven by education and theories. They may be experimental (randomized controlled experiments) or quasi-experimental. Qualitative research methods rely on the value of subjective human interpretations in the evaluation process. The