Social Dimension Singapore

Social Workers' Day 2013 Symposium

Social Dimension would like to wish its readers a Happy Social Workers Week!

Our featured video today is the keynote presentation by Assoc Prof Timothy Sim on Practice Research in Social Work, at the Singapore Association of Social Workers' (SASW) Social Workers' Day Symposium held on 23rd March 2013.

 

 

 

Outcome Evaluation and Outcome Measurement: A Reality Check

NG Guat Tin, PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Applied Social Sciences

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Email: [email protected]

 

 

 

Introduction

An emphasis on programme evaluation among human service organizations occurs within the context of “the era of accountability,” in which public and private sectors spearhead the drive towards accounting for the use of public resources and funding for results (Kettner, Moroney, & Martin, 2013, p. 4). In America, it dates back to the 1960s and 1970s where evaluation serves to justify new or continuation of public policies or programmes, whether facing opposition to its implementation or experiencing doubts about its effectiveness in addressing various social problems, such as poverty (Datta, 2011). Though evaluation is rooted in social science research methods, it was given an additional boost by new public management (also referred to as managerialism). Royse, Thyer, Padgett, and Logan (2006) referred to programme evaluation as “applied research used as part of the managerial process” (p. 11). Managerialism that was adopted by public sector organizations in many western nations, since the late 1970s, heralded management concepts and tools that were designed for “auditing, control, regulation, assessment, inspection and evaluation” (Diefenbach, 2009, p. 899).