Annotated Bibliographies for Program Evaluations

Order Description

Program background, purpose, questions and criteria

Length: 1,200 words

The purpose of this assessment is to familiarise you with the structure and content of high-quality evaluations.
Select 5 program evaluations that you consider to be high quality and provide annotations for each of them. The evaluations need not show positive results, but you
should be able to defend the evaluations as methodologically and conceptually robust. These can be drawn from peer-reviewed publications, government reports,
foundation reports, or other sources.

There are several excellent sources on writing an annotated bibliography. My favorites are the Purdue Online Writing Labs Annotated Bibliography and Cornell
University’s How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography. Each annotation should be approximately a little under 250 words, but you may find that some sources required a
bit more and others a bit less.

As you are reading, consider

1. The overall merit (quality), worth (value), and significance (importance) of the evaluation
2. The clarity of the purpose of the evaluation, including whether the evaluation was/ is ongoing (formative) or at the program conclusion (summative)
3. The inputs (including data sources, sampling strategies, ethical considerations)
4. The outcomes
5. The methodology (qualitative, quantitative, mixed) and its strength (or lack thereof)
6. The validity of the conclusions drawn based on the inputs, outcomes, and methodology.

find the 5 high quality evaluations in RAND Corporation and the Wallace Foundation’s evaluations. RAND has several high-quality evaluations, including one on Summer
Learning Programs. The Wallace Foundation evaluates many of its initiatives, including one on After School Programs.