Jill Anne Chouinard and Rodney Hopson, together with a stellar line-up of authors, do a great service to the evaluation community in focusing our attention on the issue of culture. Th e issue is very timely, as recent events have sparked considerable debate on more general questions about how to address diverse cultures in Western societies. While this issue is about culture in international development evaluation, many if its lessons are applicable and adaptable more broadly to evaluations conducted in culturally diverse settings. CJPE is proud to publish this special issue which promises to be a classic resource for all who wish to learn about how to evaluate in a variety of cultural contexts.
Les competences requises d’un evaluateur sont sans aucun douteun sujet qui s’echauffe dans plusieurs domaines. Ce numero specialarrive donc a point et fournit la premiere analyse comparative desavancees internationales en matiere de formulation de competencespour les evaluateurs. Les riches descriptions des arguments propresau contexte pour la formulation de competences et les processus pourleur developpement sont en elles-memes eclairantes. Elles permettentde mieux comprendre les approches et produits emergents, tous fortdifferents les uns des autres. De superbes textes d’analyses viennentencadrer des lectures descriptives de cas. Ces dernieres presentent ala fois le cadre historique et theorique necessaire a la comprehensionde ce qui se passe et ne se passe pas dans le domaine des competencesen evaluation, de l’accreditation, et de la certification. Il est a noter quece numero presente aussi des points de vue critiques qui suggerentque les efforts fournis a ce jour ne sont pas assez bases sur des theoriesdu changement et n’adressent pas assez les competences moinsmesurables comme la disposition et les attitudes des evaluateurs.
A developmental evaluation was undertaken to evaluate a prototype test of a new model of perinatal healthcare across acute maternity, public health, and primary care in two hospitals in a large health authority. The project was initiated to bridge gaps in care across the acute and community settings to ensure a seamless perinatal healthcare journey for women. The objective of the evaluation was to support the prototyping process by providing data to inform decisions as the prototype was developed and by documenting decisions as they were made. This article explores challenges faced during the evaluation, including unfamiliarity of the health sector with prototype projects and their inherent uncertainty, a disconnect between the rapid pace of a prototype project and bureaucratic hurdles of working within a large organization, and high leadership turnover throughout the project. How these challenges were addressed, and the lessons learned for future evaluations, are discussed.
The AAMC Canadian Graduation Questionnaire (CGQ) is widely used for evaluating undergraduate MD programs; however, the analysis of individual items limits its usefulness. To aid in the management and interpretation of the CGQ for use in program evaluation, this study combined items from the sections on clinical learning experiences, physician competencies, and student services into scales and examined their internal structure and reliability. Factor analyses conducted on data from 517 undergraduate medical students supported combining the items into 15 scales. Two examples illustrate how the scales can be used to evaluate student experiences for different cohorts over time and across sites.
