System-Wide Evaluation: Taking the Pulse of a National Organization Serving Children, Youth, and Families at Risk

Abstract

Effective organizations evolve with society. As a response to conditions that place children and their families at risk, the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (Cooperative Extension) funded the Children, Youth, and Families At Risk National Initiative and expanded the audiences typically served. To assess organizational support for programs for at-risk audiences and examine system-wide changes, Cooperative Extension conducted a system-wide evaluation effort. From late 1997 to early 1998, data were collected from 4,956 Extension professionals working on issues related to children, youth, and families. The Organizational Change Survey was developed to measure 5 components of organizational support for programming. Performance gap items were included to compare perceptions of the current system to perceptions of an ideal system. In this article, we outline the evaluation process and discuss results that informed Cooperative Extension regarding the st...