Advocacy and Policy Change Evaluation

Advocacy and Policy Change Evaluation
Author: Annette Gardner
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2017-04-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1503602338

This is the first book-length treatment of the concepts, designs, methods, and tools needed to conduct effective advocacy and policy change evaluations. By integrating insights from different disciplines, Part I provides a conceptual foundation for navigating advocacy tactics within today's turbulent policy landscape. Part II offers recommendations for developing appropriate evaluation designs and working with unique advocacy and policy change–oriented instruments. Part III turns toward opportunities and challenges in this growing field. In addition to describing actual designs and measures, the chapters includes suggestions for addressing the specific challenges of working in a policy setting, such as a long time horizon for achieving meaningful change. To illuminate and advance this area of evaluation practice, the authors draw on over 30 years of evaluation experience; collective wisdom based on a new, large-scale survey of evaluators in the field; and in-depth case studies on diverse issues—from the environment, to public health, to human rights. Ideal for evaluators, change makers, and funders, this book is the definitive guide to advocacy and policy change evaluation.

Prevention, Policy, and Public Health

Prevention, Policy, and Public Health
Author: Amy A. Eyler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2016
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0190224657

Prevention, Policy, and Public Health provides a basic foundation for students, professionals, and researchers to be more effective in the policy arena. It offers information on the dynamics of the policymaking process, theoretical frameworks, analysis, and policy applications. It also offers coverage of advocacy and communication, the two most integral aspects of shaping policies for public health.

Advocacy Practice for Social Justice

Advocacy Practice for Social Justice
Author: Richard Hoefer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2015
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190615656

Current economic and social forces are creating a society with less equality, justice and opportunity for all but the privileged few. Social workers are called upon by their code of ethics to counteract these trends and actively work to achieve social justice. Hoefer's empirically-based, step-by-step approach demonstrates how to integrate advocacy for social justice into everyday social work practice. The book shows through anecdotes, case studies, examples, and the author's own personal experiences, exactly how advocacy can be conducted with successful outcomes. Each chapter builds upon the previous to provide a concise yet detailed blueprint for conducting successful advocacy. The previous two editions of this book have been used and admired by professors and students alike. Students value its clarity and praise the book for opening their eyes to what they often believed was "the scary and bad" world of politics and policy. After reading the book, they are motivated to become advocates for social justice because they understand how to do so. If you want to empower your students to effect changes in laws, regulations, and other types of policy at all levels, you will find this text the perfect resource to do so.

Nonprofits in Policy Advocacy

Nonprofits in Policy Advocacy
Author: Sheldon Gen
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2020-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030436969

Policy advocacy is an increasingly important function of many nonprofit organizations, as they seek broad social changes in their concerning issues. Their advocacy practices, however, have often been guided by their own past experiences, anecdotes from peer networks, and consultant advice. Most of their practices have largely escaped empirical and theoretical grounding that could better root their work in established theories of policy change. The first book of its kind, Nonprofits in Policy Advocacy bridges this gap by connecting real practices of on-the-ground policy advocates with the burgeoning academic literature in policy studies. In the process, it empirically identifies six distinct policy advocacy strategies, and their accompanying tactics, used by nonprofits. Case studies tell the stories of how advocates apply these strategies in a wide variety of issues including civil rights, criminal justice, education, energy, environment, public health, public infrastructure, and youth. This book will appeal to both practitioners and academicians, as each gains insights into the other’s views of policy change and the actions that produce it.

Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture

Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture
Author: Dale H. Eberwein
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Education and globalization
ISBN: 9781634842068

Educational culture continues to languish due to edification's inability to provide student-based technology-enhanced strategies that encourage and nurture students while embracing a student-centric approach to learning. Providing student-based technology-enhanced educational stratagems shows promise as a means to shift educational practices and augment student performance outcomes. Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture intends to provide a compilation of conceptual frameworks, research in the field of educational technologies, available educational technologies, implications for career and leadership, and developmental architectures for pedagogical practices, whether face-to-face, hybrid, or virtual that is evolving educational culture. Combining technology and the creativity of students, providing remote access, and designing curricular presentations that make use of student-centric architectures, may promote enhanced performance outcomes academically as the student enjoys non-stereotypical educational culture. Offering virtual and technology-enhanced educational culture many times tasks students with their own edifying progress. This shift in responsibility nurtures critical thinking and seems to develop intellectual maturity as the student navigates curriculum via technology-enhanced means. Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture reports and proposes alternatives to traditional educational practices, offering stakeholders options for an educational culture not widely present in modern education. By exploring educational technologies and focusing on what works in disseminating curriculum, Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture introduces educators to skill-set opportunities that evolve current educational culture.

Evaluation Foundations Revisited

Evaluation Foundations Revisited
Author: Thomas Schwandt
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2015-06-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 080479572X

Evaluation examines policies and programs across every arena of human endeavor, from efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS to programs that drive national science policy. Relying on a vast array of methods, from qualitative interviewing to econometrics, it is a "transdiscipline," as opposed to a formal area of academic study. Accounting for these challenges, Evaluation Foundations Revisited offers an introduction for those seeking to better understand evaluation as a professional field. While the acquisition of methods and methodologies to meet the needs of certain projects is important, the foundation of evaluative practice rests on understanding complex issues to balance. Evaluation Foundations Revisited is an invitation to examine the intellectual, practical, and philosophical nexus that lies at the heart of evaluation. Thomas A. Schwandt shows how to critically engage with the assumptions that underlie how evaluators define and position their work, as well as how they argue for the usefulness of evaluation in society. He looks at issues such as the role of theory, how notions of value and valuing are understood, how evidence is used, how evaluation is related to politics, and what comprises scientific integrity. By coming to better understand the foundations of evaluation, readers will develop what Schwandt terms "a life of the mind of practice," which enables evaluators to draw on a more holistic view to develop reasoned arguments and well fitted techniques.

Six Steps to Successful Child Advocacy

Six Steps to Successful Child Advocacy
Author: Amy Conley Wright
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2013-11-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 148331216X

Six Steps to Successful Child Advocacy: Changing the World for Children (by Amy Conley Wright and Kenneth J. Jaffe) offers an interdisciplinary approach to child advocacy, nurturing key skills through a proven six-step process that has been used to train child advocates and create social change around the world. The approach is applicable for micro-advocacy for one child, mezzo-advocacy for a community or group of children, and macro-advocacy at a regional, national, or international level. This practical text offers skill-building activities and includes timely topics such as how to use social media for advocacy. Case studies of advocacy campaigns highlight applied approaches to advocacy across a range of issues, including child welfare, disability, early childhood, and education. Words of wisdom from noted child advocates from the U.S. and around the world, including a foreword from Dr. Jane Goodall, illustrate key concepts. Readers are guided through the process of developing a plan and tools for a real-life child advocacy campaign.

Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation

Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation
Author: Kim Forss
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000167933

Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation is the first book to advocate the virtues of a long-term perspective for policy evaluation as well as to show how evaluations can take a longer time perspective than they usually do. To get there, it is necessary to understand the decision-making context of evaluations and study the obstacles and the resistance toward long-term perspectives – as knowledge of that will lay the ground for more effective advocacy. The book is divided into three parts: the first section examines different aspects of methodology and methods. In the next section, authors present case studies of long-term evaluations, examine their own experiences of such evaluations and discuss difficulties, challenges and lessons learned. Cases discussed include: education sector reforms in Sweden, local governance reforms in Denmark, policy interventions in Southern Italy and Brazil, and Paris Declaration Principles of aid effectiveness such as Swedish aid to Tanzania, Vietnam, Laos and Sri Lanka. Finally, the third section sees the authors turn to a set of contextual issues and concluding remarks. Bringing together a rich collection of insights and a renowned group of experts, Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation: Increasing Relevance and Utility, constitutes a significant landmark in the field.

The Evaluation Society

The Evaluation Society
Author: Peter Dahler-Larsen
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2011-11-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0804778124

Evaluation—whether called by this name, quality assurance, audit, accreditation, or others—is an important social activity. Any organization that "lives in public" must now evaluate its activities, be evaluated by others, or evaluate others. What are the origins of this wave of evaluation? And, what worthwhile results emerge from it? The Evaluation Society argues that if we want to understand many of the norms, values, and expectations that we, sometimes unknowingly, bring to evaluation, we should explore how evaluation is demanded, formatted, and shaped by two great principles of social order: organization and society. With this understanding, we can more conscientiously participate in evaluation processes; better position ourselves to understand many of the mysteries, tensions, and paradoxes in evaluation; and use evaluation in a more informed way. After exploring the sociology and organization of evaluation in this landmark work, author Peter Dahler-Larsen concludes by discussing issues that are critical for the future of evaluation—as a discipline and a societal norm.

Outcome Harvesting

Outcome Harvesting
Author: Ricardo Wilson-Grau
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2018-11-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1641133945

Are you a grant maker, manager or evaluator who must assess your work to improve as well as be accountable for the use of resources and results? Does the project, program or organization you fund, manage or evaluate contend with substantial uncertainty about what to do and what will be the results? Do you thus experience constant change and unexpected and unforeseeable actors and factors in your intervention? Do you need to know what you are achieving and how in real time? And therefore, do you seek an alternative to conventional monitoring and evaluation of social change results? If yes, then you are the audience for this book. Beginning in 2002, working closely with co-evaluators and commissioners of evaluations, the author developed Outcome Harvesting to enable evaluators, grant makers, and managers to identify, formulate, verify, and make sense of changes that interventions have influenced in a broad range of cutting–edge innovation and development projects and programs around the world. Over these years, he led Outcome Harvesting evaluative exercises involving almost 500 non-governmental organizations, networks, government agencies, funding agencies, community-based organizations, research institutes and university programs. In over fifty evaluations, with forty co-evaluators he has harvested thousands of outcomes on six continents. Outcome Harvesting has proven useful in evaluations of a great diversity of initiatives: human rights advocacy, political, economic and environmental advocacy, arts and culture, health systems, information and communication technology, conflict and peace, water and sanitation, taxonomy for development, violence against women, rural development, organic agriculture, participatory democracy, waste management, public sector reform, good governance, eLearning, social accountability, and business competition, amongst others. In this book, the author explains the steps of Outcome Harvesting and how to customize them according to the nine underlying principles. He shares his experience and gives practical advice on how to work with Outcome Harvesting and remain true to its essential features.