Faculty

Ann Doucette, Ph.D., Director

Dr. Ann Doucette is the director of The Evaluators' Institute (September 2008), director of the Midge Smith Center for Evaluation Effectiveness, and a research professor at Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University, Washington, DC. She has broad experience in the management, analysis, and evaluation of diverse intervention programs, the development of accountability and outcomes monitoring systems at individual and system levels; research methodology, data collection strategies, psychometric and measurement techniques, and applied statistical analysis, including both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Dr. Doucette has been a TEI faculty member since 2003, and teaches Applied Measurement for Evaluation and Making Evaluation Data Actionable.

Dr. Doucette has worked with federal and state organizations, universities, community groups, public schools, commercial health plans, foundations, and with the United Nations – International Fund for Agricultural Development regarding evaluation management and design, analytic modeling, assessment, testing and measurement in the areas of poverty reduction and disparity, health and behavioral health care, school reform (urban and minority education), social systems and social policy, juvenile justice, and conflict and cooperation models. Her expertise includes the development of performance and outcome measurement systems that target accountability, quality monitoring and outcomes for system and individual levels of intervention/care. Her work includes a specialized emphasis on measurement, which she considers fundamentally critical for evaluation practice, and a complex adaptive systems perspective. She has developed several assessment measurement approaches using Item Response Theory (IRT) to generate measures having greater precision using brief, less burdensome instrumentation, which have the potential to lead to computer-adaptive applications and real-time data usage.

Dr. Doucette has served on several technical advisory panels. Among these panels are: the American Psychological Association (APA) Presidential Taskforce on Outcomes Assessment and the Taskforce on Pay-for-Performance; the American Medical Association's Physicians Consortium for Quality Improvement; The Joint Commission; Hospital-based Inpatient Psychiatric Services (HBIPS) measures; National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) ADHD and substance abuse measures; and the Forum on Performance Measures for Behavioral Healthcare and Related Service Systems. She received her doctoral training at Columbia University.

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Leona Ba, Ed.D.

Dr. Leona Ba is an international development consultant with more than 15 years of experience. Her areas of expertise include Monitoring and Evaluation and Strategic Planning.

Dr. Ba acquired her extensive experience in evaluation and strategic planning while working on numerous consulting assignments with organizations such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Plan International, and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). She has conducted evaluations of programs intervening in various sectors including institutional capacity building, emergency response, education, health, and natural resource management.

Dr. Ba has taught university-level and professional development courses in West Africa and the United States of America in various subjects including research methods and intercultural communication. In 2000 and 2001, she co-taught the Evaluators’ Institute course entitled Evaluation In and Across Different Cultures. She has a special interest in culture and its implications for evaluation and has conducted research on knowledge management and organizational culture. She has worked and lived in various countries in Africa, Europe, and North America and recently completed a one-year assignment in Haiti evaluating USAID development programs.

Dr. Ba holds a Doctorate in Human Resource Development / Organizational Development from the George Washington University, and a Master of Science in Agriculture from the University of Maryland.

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Clive Belfield, Ph.D.

Dr. Clive Belfield is an Associate professor in the Department of Economics, Queens College, City University of New York, and co-director of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. He is also Associate Editor of the Economics of Education Review and a Research Fellow at the Center for Analysis of Post Secondary Education and Employment (CAPSEE) at Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Exeter in England. His research interests include cost-benefit analysis, early education, and education program evaluation. His most recent book is The Price We Pay: The Economic and Social Costs of Inadequate Education (Brookings Press, 2007) and he has authored numerous articles in the economics of education. He has also performed consultancy services to the World Bank, the U.S. Department of Education, and the British Government, as well as for non-profit foundations and think-tank agencies in education.

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James Bell, M.A.

James Bell is the founder and president of James Bell Associates, Inc., an award-winning firm that designs and conducts evaluations of innovative health and human services programs for federal, state and local government agencies and non-profit foundations. His 36 years of experience on more than 100 projects spans an array of evaluation designs and program areas, including: a mixed-method evaluation of the first Medicaid managed care demonstrations; exploratory case studies of innovations in rural health care finance and delivery; a random assignment evaluation of a promising foster care prevention intervention; and, a nationally representative survey on protections for human research subjects. Funded by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies, he has focused in recent years on evaluating the clinical outcomes and costs of integrated services for persons living with HIV/AIDS and co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. From 1974 to 1979, he worked with Joseph Wholey and other members of the Urban Institute's Program Evaluation Studies Group to develop logic models, evaluability assessment and other approaches to planning useful program evaluations.

For further information, see James Bell Associates at: www.jbassoc.com.

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John Bryson, Ph.D.

Dr. John Bryson is the McKnight Presidential Professor of Planning and Public Affairs, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He works in the areas of leadership, strategic management, and the design of organizational and community change processes. He wrote the best-selling and award-winning book, Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations (2004), and co-wrote (with Barbara Crosby) the award-winning book, Leadership for the Common Good (2005).

Dr. Bryson is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He has received many awards for his work, including four best book awards, three best article awards, the General Electric Award for Outstanding Research in Strategic Planning from the Academy of Management, and the Distinguished Research Award and the Charles H. Levine Memorial Award for Excellence in Public Administration given jointly by the American Society for Public Administration and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. He serves on the editorial boards of Public Management Review, International Public Management Journal, American Review of Public Administration, and Journal of Public Affairs Education.

From 2004 to 2008 he served as associate dean of the Humphrey Institute. From 1998 to 2000 he was director of the Institute's Master of Public Affairs degree; from 1997 to 2000 he was collegiate program leader for the University of Minnesota Extension Service; from 1997 to 1999, he was director of the Institute's Reflective Leadership Center; and from 1983 to 1989, he was associate director of the University's Strategic Management Research Center. He has consulted with a wide variety of governing bodies, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and for-profit corporations in North America and Europe. He holds a doctorate and master of science degree in urban and regional planning and a master of arts degree in public policy and administration, all from the University of Wisconsin.

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Doreen Cavanaugh, Ph.D.

Dr. Doreen Cavanaugh is a research associate professor at the Health Policy Institute, Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Georgetown University where she is responsible for conducting a program of research and policy analysis in the areas of child and adolescent mental health and substance abuse treatment. She is a senior advisor to the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, (SAMHSA) on adolescent issues addressing the financing and organization of adolescent substance abuse treatment services as well as services for youth with co-occurring disorders. Dr. Cavanaugh is the national program director of a 16 state CSAT grant initiative to improve the state infrastructure supporting delivery of treatment for adolescents with substance use and co-occurring disorders. She served as chairperson of the Financing Workgroup for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Summit on Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and works on issues including financing treatment and program sustainability. She has completed an extensive analysis of federal policies affecting the delivery of treatment services for adolescents with substance use disorders, and has consulted on the organization and financing of child and adolescent treatment services for states, foundations and national organizations.

Dr. Cavanaugh is co-chair of a CSAT sponsored committee developing a consumer perception of care survey for adolescents and adults receiving substance abuse treatment. She was the co-chair of a joint CSAT/CMHS Child/Adolescent Modular Survey Committee; and chaired the Washington Circle Subcommittee on Performance Measurement for Care of Adolescents with Substance Use Disorders, a Center for Substance Abuse Treatment supported national group of adolescent substance abuse treatment experts charged with assessing the applicability of the Washington Circle administrative measures to adolescent substance abuse treatment. She serves on a number of related committees including the CMHS sponsored Outcomes Roundtable for Children and Families. Currently Dr. Cavanaugh teaches Mental Health Policy at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. She taught both Child Welfare Policy and Mental Health Policy at the Boston University School of Social Work for many years. Dr. Cavanaugh received her Ph.D. in Social Policy from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University.

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Joseph Cordes, Ph.D.

Dr. Joseph Cordes is Associate Director of the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration and Professor of Economics, Public Policy and Public Administration, and International Affairs, and is currently an Associate Scholar in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute. His academic specialization in economics is in the area of public economics and policy analysis. Dr. Cordes serves on the Research Advisory Council of the National Consortium on Nonprofit Enterprise. He has been a consultant to numerous government agencies including the Congressional Budget Office, Internal Revenue Service Office of Research, the U.S. Treasury Department, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Research Council. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His current research focuses on the economics of nonprofit organizations, comparative analysis of welfare state institutions, U.S. tax policy, and the application of benefit cost analysis to evaluating the economic effects of public policies intended to mitigate risks natural hazards and terrorist attacks.

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Don A. Dillman, Ph.D.

Dr. Don A. Dillman is Regents Professor in the Department of Sociology and Deputy Director for Research in the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center at Washington State University. From 1991-1995 he was Senior Survey Methodologist at the U.S. Bureau of the Census, where he provided leadership for the development of the 2000 Decennial Census Form and implementation procedures. A past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, he is also the recipient of the 2002 Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics. His 1978 book, Mail and Telephone Surveys, was the first to provide step-by-step procedures for conducting such surveys, and is now in its third edition as Internet, Mail and Mixed-Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method (Wiley, 2009). His current research emphasizes how the visual design and layout of questionnaires influences respondent answers, and the use of addressed-based sampling to survey the general public using mail and the Internet. Recent papers appear on his Web site www.sesrc.wsu.edu/dillman.

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Delwyn Goodrick, Ph.D.

Dr. Delwyn Goodrick is a psychologist who has been working as an academic and as an evaluation practitioner for the past fifteen years. She has extensive experience in teaching evaluation and social research to academics and to public sector practitioners.

During her tenure as an academic in Psychology at Victoria University during the early part of the 1990’s she developed postgraduate training programs in program evaluation and social research. While teaching these programs she undertook commissioned evaluations of public sector programs. These contracted pieces of work highlighted the importance of strong theory and explicit positioning in guiding practical program evaluation.

In the early 1990’s Delwyn took a seconded position in the Department of Human Services, during which time she established an evaluation support unit designed to foster capacity in evaluation within the public sector. Following on from this role she became an evaluation project manager at CIRCLE (at RMIT) working primarily on a large scale Criminal Justice evaluation and several smaller evaluation projects.

For the last four years Delwyn has maintained her own evaluation consultancy practice. She conducts evaluations of small and medium size programs and policy initiatives, and offers workshops to enhance the capacity of public sector workers in evaluation.

Delwyn regularly presents 2-5 day workshops to a range of public sector agencies in Australia, including, the Department of Education and Training, Department of Environment and Heritage, Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Queensland Health, Southern Health, Multicultural Affairs Queensland, Legal Aid Queensland, NSW Health, and the Victorian Department of Justice.

She currently offers research and evaluation programs for the academic sector through the New Zealand Social Statistics Network (NZSSN), and The Australian Social Research Institute (ACSPRI) and has been contracted to conduct specialist research programs by a number of universities including, University of Western Sydney, Victoria University, Murdoch University, Curtin University, Central Queensland University, Waikato University, University of Otago and University of Auckland. Delwyn also conducts research and evaluation workshops outside of Australia for Rod Laird Organisation, a UK based training consultancy, and offers public sector programs on evaluation in Singapore and New Zealand.

Delwyn’s facilitation style is interactive and participatory. She has been actively involved in the Australasian Evaluation Society, and is currently the co-editor of the Evaluation Journal of Australasia (EJA).

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Gary T. Henry, Ph.D.

Gary T. Henry holds the Duncan MacRae ’09 and Rebecca Kyle MacRae Professorship of Public Policy in the Department of Public Policy and directs the Carolina Institute for Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Also, he holds the appointment as senior statistician in Frank Porter Graham Institute for Child Development at UNC-Chapel Hill. Formerly, he held the William Neil Reynolds Distinguished University Visiting Professorship at UNC. He has served as a professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Department of Political Science, and Department of Education Policy Studies at Georgia State University and the Department of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology. He previously served as director of Evaluation and Learning Services for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Henry has evaluated a variety of policies and programs, including North Carolina’s Disadvantaged Student Supplemental Fund, Georgia’s Universal Pre-K, public information campaigns, and the HOPE Scholarship as well as school reforms and accountability systems.

The author of Practical Sampling (Sage 1990), Graphing Data (Sage 1995) and co-author of Evaluation: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Guiding, and Improving Policies and Programs (Jossey-Bass 2000), Henry has published extensively in the fields of evaluation and education policy. He received the Outstanding Evaluation of the Year Award from the American Evaluation Association in 1998 for his work with the Georgia’s Council for School Performance and the Joseph S. Wholey Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2001 from the American Society for Public Administration and the Center for Accountability and Performance along with Steve Harkreader. Dr. Henry currently serves a principal member for the Committee on Systemic Reform, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Also, he served on a National Research Council/National Academies of Sciences committee assessing the effects of "green schools" on the health and productivity of teachers and students and co-authored the committee report.

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James Edwin Kee, J.D.

Professor James Edwin Kee is a professor in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University, Washington, DC. Prior to joining GWU, he spent 17 years in government in New York as a legal assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and as a legislative assistant and counsel to the State Assembly, and in Utah as state budget director and the first executive director of the Utah Department of Administrative Services. He served 4 years as managing editor of Public Budgeting & Finance and has published numerous articles on federal and state budget and fiscal policy, inter-governmental relations, and public management in such prestigious periodicals as the Harvard Law Review, the Public Administration Review, and Public Budgeting and Finance. His B.A. is from the University of Notre Dame and his M.P.A. and J.D. degrees from New York University where he was a Root-Tilden Scholar. He teaches courses in leadership and ethics and on contracting and public-private partnerships. He taught previously at New York University's Law School, the Lehman and Hunter Colleges of the City University of New York, and the University of Utah. He recently published Transforming Public and Nonprofit Organizations: Stewardship for Leading Change (co-author Kathryn Newcomer).

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Mark W. Lipsey, Ph.D.

Dr. Mark W. Lipsey is director of the Peabody Research Institute at Vanderbilt University. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of public policy, program evaluation, social intervention, field research methodology, and research synthesis, with particular emphasis on programs for children and youth. He is co-author of the 7th Edition of Rossi et al., Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, a leading textbook in evaluation, and has consulted widely (e.g., in the U.S., Europe, India, and Africa). He is a former editor-in-chief of AEA's New Directions for Program Evaluation and has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Evaluation, Evaluation Review, Evaluation Studies Review Annual, and Evaluation and Program Planning. His work has been recognized with awards from the American Evaluation Association, the Society for Prevention Research, and the Campbell Collaboration, among others. Dr. Lipsey has taught regularly in The Evaluators' Institute since its inception in 1996.

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Arnold Love, Ph.D.

Dr. Arnold Love is an internationally-recognized independent consultant based in Toronto, Canada, with more than 30 years of experience in evaluation. He has a special interest in building organizations' capacity to use evaluation and information systems for driving change, improving performance, and achieving tangible results. Dr. Love is author of a chapter on internal evaluation in Encyclopedia of Program Evaluation (Sage, 2004), Internal Evaluation: Building Organizations from Within (Sage, 1991), and a chapter on implementation analysis for the new edition of The Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation (Jossey-Bass, 2004). Dr. Love is editor of the Canadian Evaluation Society's Evaluation Methods Sourcebook Series and of special issues of New Directions for Program Evaluation and the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation on the topic of internal evaluation and Harvard University’s Evaluation Exchange on the topic of evaluation and technology. His recent articles have appeared in Evaluation and Program Planning, The American Journal of Evaluation, New Directions for Evaluation, the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, and the Nonprofit Quarterly.

Dr. Love received his Ph.D. from University of Waterloo; has taught program evaluation at the National Centre for non-profit Management at York University and at the Centre for Innovative Management at Athabasca University. He served two terms as president of the Canadian Evaluation Society. In 1996, he received the CES National Award for Distinguished Contribution to Evaluation in Canada and in 2005, he was made a Fellow of the CES. The American Evaluation Association recognized Dr. Love in 1998 for his contributions to building a worldwide evaluation community and in 2005 for his service to AEA. He recently served as a member of the Performance Measurement, Evaluation and Audit Committee of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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Melvin M. Mark, Ph.D.

Dr. Melvin M. Mark is Professor and Head of Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University. He has served as president of AEA and as editor of the American Journal of Evaluation, where he is Editor Emeritus. He has conducted federally funded evaluations in the areas of prevention programs for at-risk youth, federal personnel policies, and industrial modernization, and has been involved in evaluations of state and local programs. An award-winning teacher, he has published numerous papers and chapters on the theory and design of evaluations. Among his books are Evaluation: An integrated framework for understanding, guiding, and improving policies and programs (with Gary Henry and George Julnes), the SAGE Handbook of Evaluation (with Ian Shaw and Jennifer Greene), What counts as credible evidence in applied research and evaluation practice (with Stewart Donaldson and Tina Christie), Evaluation in action: Interviews with expert evaluators (with Jody Fitzpatrick and Tina Christie) and the forthcoming Social Psychology and Evaluation (with Stewart Donaldson and Bernadette Campbell).

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Michael Morris, Ph.D.

Dr. Michael Morris is Professor of Psychology at the University of New Haven, where he serves as director of the Master's Program in Community Psychology, and where, in both 1985 and 2008, he received the University's Award for Distinguished Teaching. His 1993 study, "Program Evaluators and Ethical Challenges" (published in Evaluation Review) was the first national survey examining the ethical conflicts faced by evaluators. A former chair of the American Evaluation Association's Ethics Committee, he co-edited an issue of New Directions for Evaluation devoted to "Current and Emerging Ethical Challenges in Evaluation." His work has appeared in many journals, including the American Journal of Evaluation, Evaluation and Program Planning, Social Policy, American Journal of Community Psychology, Sociology and Social Research, and The American Sociologist. He is co-author of Poverty and Public Policy (Greenwood Press, 1986), co-editor of Myths about the Powerless (Temple University Press, 1996), and has authored several invited book chapters, including one on ethics in The International Handbook of Educational Evaluation (2003). He was editor of AJE's Ethical Challenges column from 1998-2004, and is currently an Associate Editor of AJE. For the past three decades he has worked as an organizational consultant for a variety of human-services and public-sector agencies, and currently serves as an evaluator for the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. His latest book, Evaluation Ethics for Best Practice, was published by Guilford Press in 2008.

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Kathryn Newcomer, Ph.D.

Dr. Kathryn Newcomer is the director of the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University. She teaches public and non-profit program evaluation, research design, and applied statistics. She routinely conducts research and training for federal and local government agencies and non-profit organizations on performance measurement and program evaluation, and has designed and conducted evaluations for several U.S. federal agencies and dozens of non-profit organizations.

Dr. Newcomer has published five books, Improving Government Performance (1989), The Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation (1994, 2nd edition 2004), Meeting the Challenges of Performance-Oriented Government (2002), Getting Results: A Guide for Federal Leaders and Managers (2005), Transformational Leadership: Leading Change in Public and Nonprofit Agencies, (June 2008), a volume of New Directions for Public Program Evaluation, Using Performance Measurement to Improve Public and Nonprofit Programs (1997), and numerous articles in journals including the Public Administration Review. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and currently serves on the Comptroller General’s Educators’ Advisory Panel. She served as president of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) for 2006-2007. She has received two Fulbright awards, one for Taiwan (1993) and one for Egypt (2001-2004). She received the Elmer Staats Award for Achievements in Government Accountability, awarded by the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration, May 8, 2008. And Dr. Newcomer has won two awards for her teaching, in 1996 she was awarded the Peter Vail Excellence in Education Award, and in May 2000 she received the George Washington Award. She has lectured on performance measurement and public program evaluation in Ukraine, Brazil, Egypt, Taiwan, Colombia, Nicaragua, and the UK.

Dr. Newcomer earned a B.S. in education and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Kansas, and her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Iowa.

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Michael Quinn Patton, Ph.D.

Dr. Michael Quinn Patton directs an organizational development and evaluation consulting business, Utilization-Focused Evaluation. He has been an independent evaluation practitioner for over 35 years and has worked at local, state, national, and international levels. He has been teaching in The Evaluators’ Institute since its beginning.

He is author of six books on program evaluation including his latest: Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use (2010). Other books include a 4th edition of Utilization-Focused Evaluation (2008) and Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods (3rd edition, 2002). He has also written a book with two Canadian colleagues entitled Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed (2006) that applies systems thinking and complexity theory to social innovation.

He is a former president of the American Evaluation Association (AEA). He received the Alva and Gunner Myrdal Award from the Evaluation Research Society for "outstanding contributions to evaluation use and practice" and the Paul Lazarsfeld Award for lifetime contributions to evaluation theory from AEA. He was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota for 18 years, including five years as director of Minnesota Center for Social Research. He received the University's Morse-Amoco Award for outstanding teaching. He also teaches annually in the International Program for Development Evaluation Training in Ottawa.

He is a generalist, having evaluated a wide variety of programs in areas as diverse as health, human services, education, cooperative extension, environment, agriculture, employment, training, leadership development, literacy, early childhood and parent education, poverty alleviation, economic development, and advocacy. He has consulted with nonprofit, philanthropic, private sector, and international organizations. His consulting practice has included program evaluation, strategic planning, conflict resolution, board facilitation, staff development, futuring, and a variety of organizational development approaches.

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Theodore H. Poister, Ph.D.

Dr. Theodore H. Poister is professor of Public Management and Policy in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University where he specializes in public management and applied research methods. He has previously served on the faculties of Southern University and Penn State University and for a year was a visiting professor at George Washington University. He has a long-standing interest in the use of applied research methods and statistics to evaluate the performance of public programs, and he teaches a highly regarded two course sequence in this area at Georgia State in which he strives to make applied statistics understandable and useable for master’s students in public administration.

Poister is the author of early books in the field including Public Program Analysis: Applied Research Methods (University Park Press, 1978), Applied Program Evaluation in Local Government (Lexington Books, 1979), and Performance Monitoring (Lexington Books, 1983), and his volume on Performance Measurement for Public and Nonprofit Organizations was published in 2003 by Jossey-Bass. Much of his research is concerned with results oriented management strategies in the public sector and the use of such tools as strategic planning and management, performance management, program evaluation, performance measurement, and quality improvement methods in government. He has published widely in these areas in such journals as Public Administration Review, Public Productivity & Management Review, Public Administration Quarterly, Evaluation Review, American Review of Public Administration, The Journal of Urban Affairs, and Public Works Management & Policy Review.

Dr. Poister has a substantive interest in transportation policy and management, but he has also worked in a variety of other program areas including housing, criminal justice, mental disabilities, child support enforcement, income maintenance, and public and community health. Beyond classroom teaching and academic research, he enjoys working in the field with practicing public and nonprofit managers, and over the years has conducted applied research projects, program evaluations, statistical analyses, strategic planning efforts, and performance measurement system development projects – as well as professional training and development programs – for a wide variety of state, federal, local, and nonprofit agencies. Organizations he has worked with in the past several years include the Georgia Department of Administrative Services, the Georgia Office of Child Support Enforcement, the Georgia Department of Community Health, the North Dakota State Auditor's Office, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and Human Resources & Skills Development Canada, as well as the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the Williamsport Bureau of Transportation, the Transportation Research Board, the Georgia Department of Transportation, the Korean Transportation Institute, and the U.S. Maritime Administration.

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Debra J. Rog, Ph.D.

Debra J. Rog, Ph.D., is an associate director with Westat and a vice president of The Rockville Institute. In her current roles, Dr. Rog is directing several evaluations in the areas of homeless services, clinical and translational science, and education and work programs, among others. She also serves in training and evaluation advising roles within the organization. Before joining Westat in January 2007, Dr. Rog was director of the Washington office of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement (CEPI) for 17 years, and was a senior research associate in CEPI. She has over 25 years of experience in program evaluation and applied research. She recently directed coordinating centers for two large multi-site evaluations for SAMHSA, and has directed numerous other projects involving health and mental health services for vulnerable populations.

Dr. Rog is a recognized expert in evaluation and applied research design, has served as the co-editor of the Applied Social Research Methods Series (50+ textbooks to date) and the Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods, and is on faculty of The Evaluators’ Institute. She has to her credit numerous publications on evaluation methodology, housing, homelessness, poverty, mental health, and program and policy development and has contributed and served on the editorial boards of the Encyclopedia of Homelessness and the Encyclopedia of Evaluation. She served as president of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and a member of AEA since its inception, as well as being a member of the two predecessor organizations. She has served in a number of capacities for AEA, including two terms as a board member, the 1990 Local Arrangements chair, the 1996 Annual Meeting Program co-chair, and on the Board Orientation Committee, Awards committee, and Membership Committee. She also is a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Public Health Association. She completed an appointment on the Advisory Committee of Women’s Services for the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and has been recognized for her evaluation work by the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Evaluation Association, the Eastern Evaluation Research Society, and the Knowledge Utilization Society.

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Patricia Rogers, Ph.D.

Dr. Patricia Rogers is professor in Public Sector Evaluation and leader of the research program in Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in the Sustainable Health and Well-Being Research Institute at RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), Australia . Dr. Rogers has undertaken evaluation and monitoring since the mid 1980s in government (federal, state, and local) and non-government organizations for a range of programs, including community capacity building, family support, criminal offenders, policing, chemical handling regulation, lab our market legislation, maternal and child health, agricultural research and extension, Indigenous housing, early childhood services, physical infrastructure, education, welfare and social change philanthropy. She is co-editor of a text on the challenges and opportunities in using program theory in evaluation in New Directions in Evaluation (Jossey-Bass, 1999). She has written on diverse topics including building evaluation capacity, using evaluation for improvement and organizational learning, accountability, project sustainability, appreciative inquiry, and cost-benefit analysis. Her most recent writing on program theory explores how it can be used effectively for evaluation and performance monitoring of complicated and complex interventions.

She has presented keynote addresses at conferences of the Australasian, Aotearoa/New Zealand, European, United Kingdom, South African and Swedish evaluation societies and associations and delivered evaluation workshops in the USA , the UK , Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. Her work has been recognized by the American Evaluation Association's Myrdal Award for Evaluation Practice, presented to an evaluation practitioner who has made a substantial and cumulative contribution to the professional practice of evaluation, and whose work brings to life the AEA's Guiding Principles for Evaluation, the Australasian Evaluation Society's Evaluation Training and Services Award for outstanding contributions to the profession of evaluation, the AES' Caulley-Tulloch Prize for Pioneering Literature in Evaluation, and the AES Best Evaluation Study Award.

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Jolene D. Smyth, Ph.D.

Dr. Jolene Smyth is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Survey Research and Methodology Program and the Department of Sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she teaches courses on Data Collection Methods and Questionnaire Design. Her publications include the 2009 edition of Mail, Internet, and Mixed-Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method (co-authored with Don A. Dillman and Leah Melani Christian) and a number of journal articles and book chapters on such topics as the effectiveness of web surveys, multiple-answer questions, open-ended questions, scalar questions, visual design, Internet surveys, and context effects in web surveys. Jolene’s research focuses on improving data collection processes through the reduction of measurement and nonresponse error. Her current research examines the effects of mode preference on survey response and measurement and understanding how literacy affects nonresponse and measurement error in self-administered surveys with an eye to how survey contact materials and questionnaires can be designed to facilitate response and minimize measurement error among low-literacy populations.

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David Wilson, Ph.D.

Dr. David Wilson is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Criminology, Law & Society at George Mason University.. He received his Ph.D. in applied social psychology from Claremont Graduate University. His research interests include program evaluation research methodology, meta-analysis, and the effectiveness of interventions for the rehabilitation of offenders and the prevention of crime and problem behavior. Recent work has focused on correctional boot camps, domestic violence interventions, incarceration-based drug treatment, and school-based prevention programs. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Experimental Criminology, a past consulting editor for Psychological Bulletin, an editor for the Crime and Justice Group of the Campbell Collaboration, and was the 1999 recipient of the Marcia Guttentag award for Early Promise as an evaluator from the American Evaluation Association.

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