Summative Evaluation
The summative evaluator has responsibility for producing an accurate description of the program--complete with measures of its effects--that summarizes both what has transpired during a particular time period and what has been its success. Results from a summative evaluation, usually compiled into a written report, can be used for several purposes:
• To assess for policymakers, funders, managers, or others, the impact of their programs and/or policies
• To document for the funding agency that services promised by the program’s planners have indeed been delivered
• To assure that a lasting record of the program remains on file
• To serve as a planning document for people who want to duplicate the program or adapt it to another setting
• To help policymakers and other decision makers make decisions about program continuation, expansion, and future funding
The focusing or general planning phase of a summative evaluation is crucial and often difficult. We are happy to provide the help you need at any or all of the following steps in earning the answers you request:
-setting the boundaries of the evaluation
• determining the purposes of the evaluation
• finding out as much as we can about the program(s) in question
• describing the program
• focusing the evaluation
• negotiating our role
-selecting appropriate evaluation methods
• choosing data collection approaches and instruments
• consolidating our concerns into a few instruments
• planning the construction and purchasing of instruments
• planning the data analysis we will perform
• choosing evaluation designs
• choosing a sampling strategy for conducting data collection
• estimating the cost of the evaluation
• coming to final agreement about services and responsibilities
-collecting and analyzing information
• setting deadlines
• setting up the evaluation designs
• administering instruments, scoring them and recording data
• doing the analysis
-reporting findings
• planning the report
• choosing a method of presentation
• assembling the report
Data Management
We are dedicated to detecting and correcting corrupt or inaccurate records from a record set, table, or database. The process of data cleaning includes data auditing, workflow specification, workflow execution, post-processing, and controlling. We can use popular methods. Those include parsing, data transformation, duplicate elimination, and statistical methods. By analyzing the data using the values of mean, standard deviation, range, and clustering algorithms, we can find values that are unexpected and thus erroneous.
We can examine any standardized residual greater than about 3 in absolute value, Hat element greater than 3p/n (p=k+1, k degrees of freedom), a Cook’s distance > 1, and Mahalanobis’s distance for case. We run Outlier Analysis such as a run-sequence plot, a scatter plot, a histogram, and a box plot.
Tests for Reliability, Validity, and Power
We can test reliability (such as Cronbach’s alpha, test-retest reliability, split-half reliability, and inter-rater reliability) and validity (such as content validity, construct validity, criterion validity, internal validity, and external validity).
Data Analysis
We can design and perform the required statistical analyses. We are experts in statistical analysis such as t-test, ANOVA, traditional regression, logistic regression, MANCOVA, factor analysis, cluster analysis, survival analysis, time series analysis, canonical correlations, discriminant analysis, and more advanced statistical techniques such as structural equation modeling (SEM), hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), and path analysis. We are experts in statistical programming languages such as SAS, SPSS, HLM, Mplus, and Access.
Confidentiality
We provide all of our prospective clients with a Non-Disclosure Agreement immediately upon contact. Statistical Consulting Group shall maintain in strict confidence, and not use or disclose except pursuant to written instructions from prospective clients, provided that the obligation to protect the confidentiality of any such information or data shall not be excused if such information or data ceases to qualify as a Trade Secret as a result of the acts or omissions of Statistical Consulting Group.
Let's make it happen! Contact us today for a FREE consultation.Email:info@statisticalconsultinggroup.com Call: 781-205-4719
Statistical Consulting Group
1050 WINTER STREET SUITE 1000
WALTHAM, MA 02451
PHONE: 781-205-4719
FAX: 781-780-7918
info@statisticalconsultinggroup.com
