Using program evaluation to inform the assignment of clients to treatments

Abstract

Clients respond to treatments in different ways. A program which is successful overall can have a positive, negative, or nil impact on a given individual. Consequently, matching clients with the best available treatment in a key task for clinicians, counsellors, teachers, and managers. Evaluators can contribute to the search for optimal matches by providing credible data on the interaction of client characteristics with program outcomes. But the use of evaluation to inform the assignment of clients to treatments has been neglected in evaluation research and in craft reports. Recent overviews of evaluation purposes (e.g. Posavac & Carey, 1989; Shadish, Cook & Leviton, 1991; Worthen, 1900) do not even mention it. This neglect may be attributed to despair over the preponderance of nonsignificant findings in aptitude-treatment interaction research and/or it may be the result of the unavailability of alternate treatments in many institutions (Corno & Snow, 1986). The purpose of this article is to describe a four step procedure for using evaluation to contribute to the knowledge that intake staff need to assign clients. The procedure will be illustrated with data from an evaluation of a professional development program delivered to teacher consultants.