Browsing by Subject "Program evaluation"
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Item A program evaluation of "Teen Straight Talk"(2011-08) Trevino, Nancy; Trejos-Castillo, Elizabeth; Mulsow, Miriam; Reifman, AlanThis current project will explore the impact of Teen Straight Talk on various community groups through a developmental program evaluation. Community organization, participating parents, volunteers, and presenters were given the opportunity to give their opinions about the program. Each group’s information was analyzed and then some data were combined to make general recommendations. In addition, recommendations from each group were reported to the Teen Straight Talk program committee for future program revisions.Item Assessing the effectiveness of Title V permitting as a compliance tool in Texas(2011-05) Janecka, Joseph Albert; Lewis, Kyle, 1961-; Newburger, ManuelThis paper is a study to determine whether the Title V program, as implemented in Texas, fulfills one of the goals of the Clean Air Act. That goal is to provide an effective compliance tool for particular sources (major sources of air contaminants). The study will include a description of elements that are a direct or indirect result of the Title V program including regulations, programs, permit and related documents, enforcement cases and violation data, etc. that will result in measurements or logical arguments to support the claim that the program is an effective compliance tool as compared to any system in place before it. I discuss Title V program elements that appear to detract from the compliance effectiveness, and explore the impact of these elements on compliance determination.Item Brazilian immigrant women : the relationship of marianismo and acculturative stress to acculturation types(2012-05) Bessa, Luana Barbossa; Borich, Gary D.; Cokley, KevinThe proposed study will investigate how individuals of different acculturation types vary in their levels of acculturative stress and marianismo. First-generation Brazilian immigrant females will complete a demographic questionnaire, as well as measures of acculturation, marianismo, and acculturative stress. Two 1-way ANOVA analyses and one 1-way ANCOVA analysis will be conducted in order to explore the relationship between these variables. It is proposed that Brazilian immigrant women’s levels of acculturative stress and marianismo will vary by acculturation type. It is further proposed that measuring adherance to traditional gender roles as varying by acculturation type rather than level will yield a more nuanced understanding of this relationship by not confounding integrated and marginalized individuals. Implications and limitations of the study’s potential findings will be discussed. Lastly, a program evaluation perspective will be presented to further explicate the implications of the current study for mental health outcomes and the provision of mental health services to Brazilian immigrant women.Item Building students’ mathematics self-efficacy through student-teacher trust(2012-05) Harvey, Kristin Emilia; Borich, Gary D.; Suizzo, Marie-AnneA current national priority is improving secondary school mathematics performance. Middle school students’ trust in their mathematics teachers can lead to better relationships and increased feelings of competence, or mathematics self-efficacy, which is consistently linked to achievement. Student trust is based on perceptions of a teacher’s competence, benevolence, openness, reliability, and honesty. To determine the effect of trust in a teacher on student mathematics self-efficacy while accounting for the non-independence due to shared classroom experiences, hierarchical linear modeling will be utilized. Controlling for prior achievement, mathematics self-efficacy is expected to be higher for students who perceive their mathematics teacher meets more of the criteria for trust, with a stronger effect for low-achieving students. The implications of the outcomes of the proposed study suggest the creation of a training program to facilitate trust building between students and teachers. This report also includes an evaluation plan which details the components of the trust building program, a model for the program, and the proposed method to measure the reported outcomes.Item The cultural production of the modern program evaluator in education(2011-05) Sturges, Keith M.; Foley, Douglas E.; Foster, Kevin; Menchaca, Martha; Urrieta, Jr., Luis; Reyes, PedroThe Cultural Production of the Modern Program Evaluator in Education is a three-year critical ethnographic investigation of the identity production of program evaluators in education. The methodological approach, grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis and analytic induction, includes: 1) open-ended interviews with 20 program evaluators, 2) of which 3 were expanded into case studies, 3) numerous email exchanges, 4) personal reflections from 16 years as a professional program evaluator, 5) field notes and 6) document analysis. Using Holland et al.’s (1998) social practice theory of self and identity, this dissertation outlines the processes, identifies the cultural tools, and provides a concise political-economic history that depicts how social scientists become program evaluators. The goal of this project was to study identity production through discourses and everyday cultural practices as a way to understand how social scientists come to accept, embody, and become passionate about the figured world of contract program evaluation. This includes drawing upon and contributing to existing meaning structures and systems of privilege. The study includes detailed case studies of program evaluators’ agentic day-to-day responses to a shifting political economic landscape and competing ideological purposes for conducting evaluations.Item Detecting and correcting publication bias in meta-analysis(2009-12) Li, Xin; Borich, Gary D.; Beretvas, Susan NatashaPublication bias (PB) makes the resources for meta-analysis (M-A) unreliable in the sense of completion and accuracy, so to investigate, identify and correct PB is a very important issue in M-A. The current study proposed an empirical comparison in both detection and correcting PB, using a Monte Carlo study. Conditions to be manipulated include the number of primary studies, number of missing studies and true effect size. RANNOR in SAS will be used to generate normally distributed random variables and, for each condition, 10,000 M-As will be simulated. Type I error rates are to be calculated for the conditions with no PB and powers were estimated for the conditions with PB and adequate type I error control. Finally, a demonstration of how M-A can and should be used as a part of program evaluations was given.Item Effects of informative feedback on the regulation of achievement goals(2013-05) Han, Cheon-Woo; Borich, Gary D.This proposed study examines whether different levels of informative feedback can change students’ achievement goal orientation. A factorial repeated-measures MANOVA will be conducted to investigate changes in levels of trichotomous goals and reading comprehension scores of community college students over one academic semester. I hypothesize that both scores will be responsive to the level of informative performance feedback. Participants who get more information about their performance and a strategy to solve similar tasks will show significantly greater increases in mastery and performance-approach goals and decreases in performance-avoidance goals. In addition, effects of demographic variables on the goal-regulation outcomes (e.g., sex and ethnicity) will be examined. Implications for future research and educational applications are presented. This report also includes an evaluation plan which details the components of the trust building program, a model for the program, and the proposed method to measure the reported outcomes.Item An evaluation of the challenge model of professional development : developing the adaptive expert for the mathematics classroom(2012-05) Zúñiga, Robin Etter; Borich, Gary D.; Svinicki, MarillaRecent research on teachers’ achievement goals suggests that the teacher with a mastery goal is more likely to retain a high degree of interest in teaching, more willing to seek help with their teaching, and less likely to report professional ‘burnout.’ Section one of this study extends this line of research by testing the hypothesis that teachers with mastery goals toward teaching are more likely to display the traits of the adaptive expert. Achievement goals and adaptive expertise are measured for a sample of secondary school mathematics teachers who have attained National Board Teacher Certification. A multiple regression model is used with score on the adaptive expertise measure as the dependent variable and four independent variables. The second part of this study proposes the development and evaluation of a challenge-based model of professional development. The Legacy Cycle has been used extensively to teach transfer and adaptive expertise to college students. It has not been used, however, in the professional development of teachers. A professional development program using the Legacy Cycle for teaching high school Algebra teachers how to implement a new conceptually-based Algebra 1 curriculum is proposed. Its accompanying evaluation plan will enable further exploration of the role teacher goal orientation and school climate play in a teacher’s willingness and ability to innovate; and if having an adaptive expert in the classroom can improve student learning.Item The impact of suicide prevention gatekeeper training on Resident Assistants(2013-08) Swanbrow Becker, Martin Alan; Drum, David J.College student suicide is a significant concern on university campuses and suicide prevention has become a focus for outreach intervention. While college counseling centers appear effective in helping students who present for treatment, suicidal students also seem to underutilize professional help. Gatekeeper training programs have emerged to help colleges and universities tap into existing student social networks to encourage early intervention. Gatekeeper training is a type of suicide prevention intervention used to encourage members of the university community to identify, engage, and refer suicidal students to professional help. Resident Assistants are often a focus of such training as they exist in the living environment of students and may be more able to identify student distress than other staff. However, the potential for adverse mental health impact on those RAs we call upon to help is not well understood and no studies to date have examined the impact of suicide prevention training on their mental health. Using data from surveys administered in connection with the participation of Resident Assistants in Suicide Prevention Training at The University of Texas at Austin, this study explores the mental health impact on RAs associated with their serving as gatekeepers. Multiple regression analyses were used to study the impact of intervention load, perceived role responsibility, the acquisition of suicide prevention content knowledge and perceived competency to perform the duties of a gatekeeper, and support-seeking behavior on the stress and distress of RAs over the course of a semester. Results suggest that RAs appear resilient to situational stress experienced with resident mental health interventions. RAs also appear to have considerable prior, personal experience with suicidal thinking and others who are suicidal. Additionally, they generally report not seeking support as often as they could, yet also increasingly turn to their co-workers in residence life for support. A repeated measures ANOVA analysis found that over the course of the semester RAs reported an increased threshold for engaging in interventions with residents and for seeking support for themselves. Implications for gatekeeper training and future research are discussed.Item Manual alignment of IVS sequences and its implication in multiple sequence alignment(2011-12) Jiang, Yanan, master of cellular and molecular biology; Gutell, Robin; Miranker, Daniel P.It is recognized that an iterative comparative analysis of large-scale homologous RNAs significantly promote the understanding of an RNA family. The Gutell lab is renowned for maintaining high quality RNA sequence alignments and accurately predicted RNA secondary structures using this approach. While the current available alignment and structure data are mainly obtained by trained domain experts with extensive manual effort, it is highly desired that this process is automated and replicable given the exponentially growing number of RNA sequence data and the amount of time required for expert training. In this thesis, we learn the processes involved in comparative analysis by manually aligning a non-coding RNA family, IVS sequences, with the supervision of Dr. Gutell. Each process is then simulated by mathematical objective functions and algorithms. We also evaluate the current available RNA analysis packages that aim each of the processes. Finally, a new RNA sequence alignment algorithm incorporating structure information that can be extended for different alignment tasks is proposed.Item Nonlinear mediation in clustered data : a nonlinear multilevel mediation model(2011-05) Lockhart, Lester Leland; Borich, Gary D.; Beretvas, Susan N.Mediational analysis quantifies proposed causal mechanisms through which treatments act on outcomes. In the presence of clustered data, conventional multiple regression mediational methods break down, requiring the use of hierarchical linear modeling techniques. As an additional consideration, nonlinear relationships in multilevel mediation models require unique specifications that are ignored if modeled linearly. Improper specification of nonlinear relationships can lead to a consistently overestimated mediated effect. This has direct implications for inferences regarding intervention causality and efficacy. The current investigation proposes a nonlinear multilevel mediation model to account for nonlinear relationships in clustered data. A simulation study is proposed to compare the statistical performance of the proposed nonlinear multilevel mediation model with that of conventional methods.Item The role of the Pastoral da Criança program in the infant mortality transition in Brazil, 1980-2000(2015-08) Fujiwara, Luis Mario, 1971-; Stolp, Chandler; Potter, Joseph E.; Roberts, Bryan; Wilson, Robert; Wong, PatrickThis dissertation focuses on the role Brazil’s innovative Pastoral da Criança program had on the transition in infant and child mortality observed in that country from 1980 to 2000. Using a variety of approaches to program evaluation, this study provides insights into the novel implementation of the Pastoral program and its overall effectiveness in contributing to the infant and child mortality transition in Brazil. This dissertation also tries to understand how it was that the Pastoral managed to succeed in promoting development when so many other efforts have failed in the past. Given the environment of complexity in which this evaluative exercise was carried out, triangulation, complementarity, development, initiation, and expansion analysis were used, at the micro level of evidence, to the macro level of methods, to generate robust estimations of the Pastoral overall impact in terms of reducing infant and child mortality, as well as of the Pastoral’s effects in terms of promoting community and women’s empowerment.Item The Impact of Competence and Compliance Fidelity on The Delivery of an Integrated Adolescent Behavioral Health Screening, Assessment, and Brief Intervention In Five Distinct Primary Care Settings.(Texas Tech University, 2009-08) Graff, Chad Allen; Harris, Steven M.; Shumway, Sterling T.; Karakurt, Gunnur; Korinek, Alan W.Recent literature indicates that behavioral health disorders among youth are increasing and costly to treat. Ineffective care due to the traditional fragmentation of the nation’s health care system has contributed to the increased prevalence rates and costs. Many health and mental health professionals have worked diligently to increase their efforts of collaboration. The growing field of collaborative health care is evidence of these efforts. Many studies suggest that primary care is a prime portal of entry for youth seeking help with behavioral health problems. Thus, MFTs and other mental health professionals have focused attention on researching the integration of mental health and primary care services. Despite these efforts, many youth suffering from behavioral health disorders still go unrecognized and untreated. Several researchers have identified multiple barriers to integration that must be overcome in order for youth to benefit fully from collaborative health care. Some of these barriers to integration include: (1) time constraints placed on primary care providers (PCPs); (2) PCPs’ lack of training in screening, assessing, and treating behavioral health disorders; and (3) implementing evidence-based behavioral health interventions in primary care settings with fidelity. To date, much of the MFT research has focused on increasing collaboration between family physicians and family therapists, assessing the effectiveness of family interventions in treating various behavioral health disorders, and developing of family-centered, collaborative, biopsychosocial models of health care. However, few MFT studies have been conducted that specifically focus on the fidelity of implementing evidence-based youth behavioral health screening, assessment, and brief interventions into primary care settings. This study is important to the MFT field because it addresses the systemic challenges of transporting evidence-based interventions into real world settings that Sprenkle (2002) identified. Data used for this study are part of the Texas Adolescent Behavioral Health in Primary Care Initiative (TABHPCI) feasibility study. While the overall conceptualization of the study is grounded in systemic ideas much of the analyses in this document have to do with the specifics of how the study was carried out. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent to which compliance fidelity (i.e., the extent to which PCPs utilized core intervention components of the TABHPCI Clinical Model) and competence fidelity (i.e., the level of skill demonstrated by PCPs in utilizing the core components of the clinical model) influenced the implementation of an integrated adolescent behavioral health screening, assessment, and brief intervention program. The findings of this study indicate that primary care providers (PCPs) at the feasibility study sites experienced difficulty adhering to the standardized clinical model with an adequate level of fidelity. Implementation research requires knowledge of how organizational systems are embedded within many different contexts. To be successful, many of the barriers to integration must be overcome. Despite efforts to utilize an evidence-based implementation framework to minimize the complexity of measuring fidelity, the author was unable to fully evaluate the fidelity of the implementation of the adolescent behavioral health intervention. This study highlights the importance of developing interventions that are clearly defined and evaluable. The overall findings from this study suggest that PCPs level of competence in administering, scoring, and interpreting behavioral health screening and assessment measures influenced their levels of compliance to the TABHPCI Clinical Model. Moreover, the findings call for more MFT research that addresses the systemic nature of implementing evidence-based interventions in real world settings.Item The Seven Cs Ethical Model of Communication: Environmental Communication and Indigenous Knowledge Management Strategies in International Agricultural Development(2012-10-19) McCann, ElisabethThis dissertation explores a number of issues facing international nonprofit organizations and individuals working in agricultural interventions supporting rural development with the goal of creating an ethical foundation of communication values and practices. A theoretical framework is formulated, with the principles of environmental communication as a foundation. Special emphasis is placed upon knowledge management strategies utilized when working with indigenous populations. From these theoretical foundations, the emergent 7Cs ethical model of communication is constructed via the concepts of: Collaboration, Culture, Community, Conservation, Capacity, Care, and Consistency. A critical-rhetorical ethnographic case study of the Binational Agriculture Relief Initiative?s discourse is offered to explore the functionality and applicability of the 7Cs model. Using the 7Cs model as a guide, this analysis examines issues associated with nonprofit advocacy and developing communication strategies for international organizations serving agricultural development. Conclusions for the 7Cs ethical model of communication offer perspective on the model as a discursive response to neoliberal policies and international development ethics.Item Using cognitive and metacognitive prompts and public disclosure to foster changes in task value, motivation to self-regulate, and achievement(2011-12) Stano, Nancy Kathleen; Borich, Gary; Weinstein, Claire EllenFacilitating a classroom culture of openness has been positively linked with student outcomes, including task value, motivation, and achievement. The proposed study investigates the impact manipulating classroom culture by disclosing student responses to cognitive and metacognitive prompts during lectures has on the above student outcomes. Using a series of two-way ANOVAs, students in five sections (control, prompting only, paper and pencil response, anonymous CRS responses and public disclosure of CRS responses) will be compared on each of these dependent variables at pre-test and at post-test to examine the effect of the public disclosure condition within a classroom. Participants in the public disclosure condition are expected to have the largest increase in task value, motivation to self-regulate, and to have the highest academic achievement scores. A natural outgrowth of the proposed study is the development of an intervention focused on increasing student task value and motivation within classrooms. Therefore, this report also includes an evaluation plan, outlining the essential program components, a logic model for this program, and the proposed method in which the reported outcomes will be measured.Item Using quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate survey item quality : a demonstration of practice leading to item clarity(2011-05) Alanis, Kelly Lynn; Emmer, Edmund T.; Beretvas, Susan N.; Holleran, Lori K.; Sherry, Alissa R.; Spence, Richard T.; Raffeld, Paul C.The purpose of this study was to propose and evaluate a procedure for revising an existing self-administered survey that is in need of item revision and/or scale reduction while maximizing validity and reliability. The procedure was demonstrated using the Client Evaluation of Self and Treatment (CEST; Joe, Broome, Rowan-Szal, & Simpson, 2002), a self-administered survey used in drug and alcohol treatment agencies. The procedure included confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses of a large dataset of completed CEST surveys, a readability analysis, and cognitive interviewing of two different groups of respondents to determine what problems they might have with CEST items. The cognitive interviewing revealed a number of issues that led to confusion among respondents, including items with two distinct concepts embedded, items containing absolutes and vague qualifiers, misinterpreted items, and terms and phrases respondents had difficulty understanding. The CEST was also judged to be long and potentially burdensome to respondents. Based on the results of this evaluation, a new survey—the Brief Assessment of Self in Context (BASIC)—also intended for use by substance abuse treatment providers, was constructed. First, factor analyses of the CEST and advice from an expert panel were used to determine which scales to retain. Next, quantitative analyses and cognitive interviewing helped determine which CEST items to retain and which to revise. Readability, sound item writing principles, and response format and scale requirements were also used to determine which items to include in the initial draft of the BASIC and guided item construction when needed. After the panel of experts provided feedback on the first revision, a final draft was prepared. Another round of cognitive interviewing was followed by administration of the final draft of the survey to a representative sample. The results indicated that the BASIC’s items are clear, unambiguous, and easy to interact with and understand, and that the instrument is an improvement over the CEST. In brief, the procedure demonstrated in this study produced a psychometrically sound instrument composed of items that are easy for respondents to access.