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The upside of an annual survey in light of involvement and use: Evaluating the Advanced Technological Education program
Author(s) -
Toal Stacie A.,
Gullickson Arlen R.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
new directions for evaluation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.374
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1534-875X
pISSN - 1097-6736
DOI - 10.1002/ev.349
Subject(s) - program evaluation , medical education , workforce , feeling , data collection , psychology , research program , political science , engineering management , engineering , medicine , sociology , public administration , philosophy , epistemology , social psychology , social science , law
In 1999, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded funds to the Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University to conduct an external evaluation of the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. ATE, a federally mandated program designed to increase the number and quality of skilled technicians in the U.S. workforce, has funded over 346 projects and centers across the nation. This case study describes the relationship between project‐level involvement in the ATE program evaluation and the use and influence of the evaluation on project primary investigators and evaluators. Although this large, multisite program evaluation employed numerous evaluative data‐collection and dissemination techniques, project leaders and evaluators associated the program evaluation primarily with an annual Web‐based survey. The NSF's expectation that projects would complete the annual survey contributed to feelings of involvement and, in many cases, promoted use and impact. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association.