Suchergebnisse

Because of their expertise in working with volunteers, social workers may be called on to provide consultation to organizations that are not traditional social service agencies. Unpaid volunteer donors provide the vast majority of this country's blood supply; however, many donors give only once, and few think of themselves as regular, committed donors. The purpose of this study was to determine if special letters of request or incentives would increase blood donations during a 14-month study period. One thousand first-time donors were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups or the control condition. On average, first-time donors gave 1.89 donations, and there were no statistically significant differences among the groups. The conclusion was drawn that the interventions were too passive.

Although the need for evaluation of prevention programs is clear, the implementation of evaluation, particularly for large, complex projects with multiple investigators, poses numerous challenges. Program evaluators in these circumstances do not have the same degree of control as, say, experimental psychologists and must find ways to obtain data while being sensitive to local environmental influences. The purpose of this article is to identify for social work evaluators some of the ways program evaluation can differ from true experiments and to discuss issues that may affect the planning and conduct of evaluation efforts. The Appalachia Community Cancer Network is used as a case example, and illustrations of its approach using formative and process evaluation are presented.