Evaluation research can assess the value and effectiveness of interventions and innovations involving people. While this has often been on a grand scale, this book focuses on small-scale projects carried out by an individual or small group, typically lasting for weeks or at most a few months, at a local rather than national level. Using limited jargon and featuring integrated, real-world examples, this second edition offers a clear, accessible background to evaluation and prepares you to undertake your own small-scale evaluation research project.

Key features include discussion of:

• Different approaches to evaluation and how to choose between them
• The advantages and disadvantages of randomized controlled trials (RCTs)
• Realist evaluation and its increasing importance
• The centrality of ethical and political issues
• The influence and opportunity of the Internet
  

Tightly focused on the realities of carrying out small-scale evaluation, Small-Scale Evaluation is a highly practical guide covering the needs of both social scientists and others without this background.

Colin Robson is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Human & Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield.

About the Author
Colin Robson is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Human & Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield. He directed a series of local, regional and national research and evaluation projects, mainly in aspects of special educational needs, at Huddersfield in association with the Hester Adrian Research Centre, University of Manchester. He subsequently was a supervisor for over twenty research students, mainly at Doctoral level, covering a wide range of disciplines - education, social work, management, music, and aspects of health, including nursing, midwifery and osteopathy, while developing and leading a postgraduate programe in Social Research and Evaluation. More recently he was, for over a decade, chief Consultant at the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation at OECD in Paris, for projects evaluating and comparing national systems for the education of students with disabilities, learning and behavioural difficulties and social disadvantages, and a follow-up project for Eurostat, the statistical arm of the European Union.

Reviews

A masterfully written text making complex issues approachable and very workable! Robson's personable style as if engaged in a conversation with the reader entices and enlightens. It is rare to find a text that to such an extent combines user-friendliness and an engaging style without compromising scientific stringency, ethics or practical usefulness and common sense. This is indeed a treasure trove for students and professionals of any kind and everywhere whose study or work involves people in groups and organisations in need of development, change or just a healthy reality check on how their organisation is doing.

-- Roland S Persson
This is a marvelous book. It communicates clearly and directly to the reader, making the subject accessible and usable rather than abstruse or forbidding. Robson excels in thinking with the reader and getting the reader to think along with him, so that reading his work seems like collaborating with a helpful mentor. Supported by many helpful diagrams and charts, he uses real-world situations, contexts, examples, and research literature to give the reader an understanding of how she might go about conducting actual research using this book as a guide. He discusses the challenges a researcher can face in conducting evaluations, such as getting those being studied to collaborate in the research project, and the strengths and weaknesses, benefits and pitfalls of so doing. And it is of great value that his focus is specifically on small-scale evaluation, because that is the type of evaluation in which a student or budding researcher is most likely to be involved. Robson is a great demystifier and guide--other research texts would benefit greatly from adopting Robson's style of thinking, writing, and guiding.
-- Jeremy J. Shapiro



Book Information
ISBN 9781412962483
Author Colin Robson
Format Paperback
Page Count 232
Imprint SAGE Publications Inc
Publisher SAGE Publications Inc
Weight(grams) 410g