This is the first book-length treatment of the concepts, designs, methods, and tools needed to conduct effective advocacy and policy change evaluations. By integrating insights from different disciplines, Part I provides a conceptual foundation for navigating advocacy tactics within today's turbulent policy landscape. Part II offers recommendations for developing appropriate evaluation designs and working with unique advocacy and policy change–oriented instruments. Part III turns toward opportunities and challenges in this growing field. In addition to describing actual designs and measures, the chapters includes suggestions for addressing the specific challenges of working in a policy setting, such as a long time horizon for achieving meaningful change. To illuminate and advance this area of evaluation practice, the authors draw on over 30 years of evaluation experience; collective wisdom based on a new, large-scale survey of evaluators in the field; and in-depth case studies on diverse issues—from the environment, to public health, to human rights. Ideal for evaluators, change makers, and funders, this book is the definitive guide to advocacy and policy change evaluation.

Prevention, Policy, and Public Health provides a basic foundation for students, professionals, and researchers to be more effective in the policy arena. It offers information on the dynamics of the policymaking process, theoretical frameworks, analysis, and policy applications. It also offers coverage of advocacy and communication, the two most integral aspects of shaping policies for public health.

Current economic and social forces are creating a society with less equality, justice and opportunity for all but the privileged few. Social workers are called upon by their code of ethics to counteract these trends and actively work to achieve social justice. Hoefer's empirically-based, step-by-step approach demonstrates how to integrate advocacy for social justice into everyday social work practice. The book shows through anecdotes, case studies, examples, and the author's own personal experiences, exactly how advocacy can be conducted with successful outcomes. Each chapter builds upon the previous to provide a concise yet detailed blueprint for conducting successful advocacy. The previous two editions of this book have been used and admired by professors and students alike. Students value its clarity and praise the book for opening their eyes to what they often believed was "the scary and bad" world of politics and policy. After reading the book, they are motivated to become advocates for social justice because they understand how to do so. If you want to empower your students to effect changes in laws, regulations, and other types of policy at all levels, you will find this text the perfect resource to do so.

Policy advocacy is an increasingly important function of many nonprofit organizations, as they seek broad social changes in their concerning issues. Their advocacy practices, however, have often been guided by their own past experiences, anecdotes from peer networks, and consultant advice. Most of their practices have largely escaped empirical and theoretical grounding that could better root their work in established theories of policy change. The first book of its kind, Nonprofits in Policy Advocacy bridges this gap by connecting real practices of on-the-ground policy advocates with the burgeoning academic literature in policy studies. In the process, it empirically identifies six distinct policy advocacy strategies, and their accompanying tactics, used by nonprofits. Case studies tell the stories of how advocates apply these strategies in a wide variety of issues including civil rights, criminal justice, education, energy, environment, public health, public infrastructure, and youth. This book will appeal to both practitioners and academicians, as each gains insights into the other’s views of policy change and the actions that produce it.

Educational culture continues to languish due to edification's inability to provide student-based technology-enhanced strategies that encourage and nurture students while embracing a student-centric approach to learning. Providing student-based technology-enhanced educational stratagems shows promise as a means to shift educational practices and augment student performance outcomes. Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture intends to provide a compilation of conceptual frameworks, research in the field of educational technologies, available educational technologies, implications for career and leadership, and developmental architectures for pedagogical practices, whether face-to-face, hybrid, or virtual that is evolving educational culture. Combining technology and the creativity of students, providing remote access, and designing curricular presentations that make use of student-centric architectures, may promote enhanced performance outcomes academically as the student enjoys non-stereotypical educational culture. Offering virtual and technology-enhanced educational culture many times tasks students with their own edifying progress. This shift in responsibility nurtures critical thinking and seems to develop intellectual maturity as the student navigates curriculum via technology-enhanced means. Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture reports and proposes alternatives to traditional educational practices, offering stakeholders options for an educational culture not widely present in modern education. By exploring educational technologies and focusing on what works in disseminating curriculum, Advocacy for Change in Educational Culture introduces educators to skill-set opportunities that evolve current educational culture.

Evaluation examines policies and programs across every arena of human endeavor, from efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS to programs that drive national science policy. Relying on a vast array of methods, from qualitative interviewing to econometrics, it is a "transdiscipline," as opposed to a formal area of academic study. Accounting for these challenges, Evaluation Foundations Revisited offers an introduction for those seeking to better understand evaluation as a professional field. While the acquisition of methods and methodologies to meet the needs of certain projects is important, the foundation of evaluative practice rests on understanding complex issues to balance. Evaluation Foundations Revisited is an invitation to examine the intellectual, practical, and philosophical nexus that lies at the heart of evaluation. Thomas A. Schwandt shows how to critically engage with the assumptions that underlie how evaluators define and position their work, as well as how they argue for the usefulness of evaluation in society. He looks at issues such as the role of theory, how notions of value and valuing are understood, how evidence is used, how evaluation is related to politics, and what comprises scientific integrity. By coming to better understand the foundations of evaluation, readers will develop what Schwandt terms "a life of the mind of practice," which enables evaluators to draw on a more holistic view to develop reasoned arguments and well fitted techniques.

Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation is the first book to advocate the virtues of a long-term perspective for policy evaluation as well as to show how evaluations can take a longer time perspective than they usually do. To get there, it is necessary to understand the decision-making context of evaluations and study the obstacles and the resistance toward long-term perspectives – as knowledge of that will lay the ground for more effective advocacy. The book is divided into three parts: the first section examines different aspects of methodology and methods. In the next section, authors present case studies of long-term evaluations, examine their own experiences of such evaluations and discuss difficulties, challenges and lessons learned. Cases discussed include: education sector reforms in Sweden, local governance reforms in Denmark, policy interventions in Southern Italy and Brazil, and Paris Declaration Principles of aid effectiveness such as Swedish aid to Tanzania, Vietnam, Laos and Sri Lanka. Finally, the third section sees the authors turn to a set of contextual issues and concluding remarks. Bringing together a rich collection of insights and a renowned group of experts, Long Term Perspectives in Evaluation: Increasing Relevance and Utility, constitutes a significant landmark in the field.