Evaluation Of Such Programs Research Articles

Evaluation of the Farmers' Markets for Kids programme.

To assess the impact of Farmers' Markets for Kids, a farmers' market-based, child-oriented nutrition education programme, on attitudes and behaviours related to preparing and consuming produce among child participants and their caregivers in New York City (NYC). Retrospective pre-test/post-test cross-sectional survey with caregivers of children participating in Farmers' Markets for Kids classes. Four NYC farmers' markets where Farmers' Markets for Kids classes are implemented; these markets serve low-income communities. Two hundred and twelve adult caregivers of children who participated in Farmers' Markets for Kids classes. Caregivers reported that children's consumption of fruits and vegetables had increased since participating in Farmers' Markets for Kids and that their children more frequently assisted with food preparation; both of these improvements were statistically significant. Caregivers also reported significant improvements in attitudes: since participating in Farmers' Markets for Kids, their children were more willing to try new fruits and vegetables and caregivers found it easier to prepare fruits and vegetables for their children. Almost all respondents (99 %) reported purchasing more fruits and vegetables since participating in Farmers' Markets for Kids and 95 % had prepared the programme's recipes at home. Findings suggest that Farmers' Markets for Kids may be an effective approach for increasing produce consumption among participating children and improving related attitudes among children and caregivers. This evaluation provides support for future efforts to undertake more rigorous evaluations of such programmes.

Challenges and opportunities for measuring the impact of a nutrition programme amongst young people at risk of food insecurity: A pilot study

AbstractFood insecurity in Australia is increasing. Organisations within the charitable food sector aim to manage, and in some cases are implementing strategies to prevent, food insecurity, such as food literacy programmes. This pilot study describes the challenges and opportunities for evaluating the impact of a food literacy programme, FoodMate by SecondBite™, which aims to reduce food insecurity amongst ‘at risk’ young people. Three community agencies working with ‘at risk’ young people delivered an 8‐week food literacy programme in Melbourne, Australia. A pre‐test/post‐test design was used and outcome measures included: (i) food intake, (ii) diet quality, (iii) cooking confidence and (iv) food independence. These were assessed via questionnaires and 24‐hour recalls at three time points: pre‐programme (T1), post‐programme (T2) and at 4 to 6‐week follow‐up (T3). Twenty‐one young people aged 16–25 years participated in this pilot study. The response rate for the questionnaire and 24‐hour recalls declined across the study: T1 (n = 21), T2 (n = 11) and T3 (n = 9). Some positive effects were associated with the programme but attrition rates were high and the majority of participants did not complete all measures. Although results were inconclusive, this study describes some common challenges of conducting a food literacy intervention with vulnerable young people and highlights the benefit of nutrition researchers and practitioners working together to conduct evaluation of such programmes.

Impact of the Shaping Healthy Choices Program on Students’ Lunchtime Fruit and Vegetable Consumption: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Multi‐Component School‐Based Nutrition Intervention

Most youth in the US do not consume recommended levels of fruits and vegetables. Multi‐component school‐based interventions are encouraged as a strategy to improve these dietary behaviors, but further evaluation of such programs is needed to assess their impact. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of the Shaping Healthy Choices Program (SHCP) on lunchtime fruit and vegetable intake, as part of a randomized controlled trial of this multicomponent nutrition education intervention. Two Northern California elementary schools were randomly assigned to control or intervention treatments. Fruit and vegetable selection, consumption, and waste from school lunches were determined at the start (fall 2012, pre‐test) and end (spring 2013, post‐test) of the implementation year using digital imaging, a plate waste method. Each fourth‐grade classroom was observed over 2–3 days within each time point. Students were included in analyses when complete fruit (n=39 control, n=72 intervention) and/or vegetable (n=39 control, n=73 intervention) data were collected on at least two days within each time point. Exact tests examined associations between school and number of students consuming no fruits and vegetables within each time point. Changes in quantities selected, consumed, and wasted were compared between schools using t‐tests and Mann‐Whitney U‐tests. Similar percentages of students consumed no vegetables at pre‐test (49% control, 47% intervention), but fewer intervention (29%) than control (72%) students consumed no vegetables at post‐test. Vegetable consumption among intervention students significantly increased relative to changes among control students (P=0.008), and percentage waste from vegetables decreased among intervention students relative to control (P=0.020). Approximately 20% of students consumed no fruit at post‐test in both schools (ns), although more intervention (26%) than control (10%) students consumed no fruit at pre‐test (P=0.052). There were no significant differences in changes in quantities of fruit selected, consumed, or wasted. Overall, the SHCP successfully improved dietary behaviors related to vegetable, but not fruit, consumption. Given the wide variability in fruit and vegetable consumption, as well as the large proportion of students consuming no vegetables, an objective for future research should be to examine other factors that may help predict these dietary behaviors and their malleability.Support or Funding InformationFunding was provided by UCANR competitive grant #11‐1018, USDA 2011‐38420‐20082, and USDA NIFA Hatch project 221082.

Should we provide oral health training for staff caring for people with intellectual disabilities in community based residential care? A cost-effectiveness analysis

Oral health training is often introduced into community-based residential settings to improve the oral health of people with intellectual disabilities (ID). There is a lack of appropriate evaluation of such programs, leading to difficulty in deciding how best to allocate scarce resources to achieve maximum effect. This article reports an economic analysis of one such oral health program, undertaken as part of a cluster randomized controlled trial. Firstly, we report a cost-effectiveness analysis of training care-staff compared to no training, using incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs). Effectiveness was measured as change in knowledge, reported behaviors, attitude and self-efficacy, using validated scales (K&BAS). Secondly, we costed training as it was scaled up to include all staff within the service provider in question. Data were collected in Dublin, Ireland in 2009. It cost between €7000 and €10,000 more to achieve modest improvement in K&BAS scores among a subsample of 162 care-staff, in comparison to doing nothing. Considering scaled up first round training, it cost between €58,000 and €64,000 to train the whole population of staff, from a combined dental and disability service perspective. Less than €15,000–€20,000 of this was additional to the cost of doing nothing (incremental cost). From a dental perspective, a further, second training cycle including all staff would cost between €561 and €3484 (capital costs) and €5815 (operating costs) on a two yearly basis. This study indicates that the program was a cost-effective means of improving self-reported measures and possibly oral health, relative to doing nothing. This was mainly due to low cost, rather than the large effect. In this instance, the use of cost effectiveness analysis has produced evidence, which may be more useful to decision makers than that arising from traditional methods of evaluation. There is a need for CEAs of effective interventions to allow comparison between programs. Suggestions to reduce cost are presented.

A model building framework for answer set programming with external computations

AbstractAs software systems are getting increasingly connected, there is a need for equipping nonmonotonic logic programs with access to external sources that are possibly remote and may contain information in heterogeneous formats. To cater for this need,hexprograms were designed as a generalization of answer set programs with an API style interface that allows to access arbitrary external sources, providing great flexibility. Efficient evaluation of such programs however is challenging, and it requires to interleave external computation and model building; to decide when to switch between these tasks is difficult, and existing approaches have limited scalability in many real-world application scenarios. We present a new approach for the evaluation of logic programs with external source access, which is based on a configurable framework for dividing the non-ground program into possibly overlapping smaller parts called evaluation units. The latter will be processed by interleaving external evaluation and model building using an evaluation graph and a model graph, respectively, and by combining intermediate results. Experiments with our prototype implementation show a significant improvement compared to previous approaches. While designed forhex-programs, the new evaluation approach may be deployed to related rule-based formalisms as well.

The National Physical Activity Plan: a call to action from the American Heart Association: a science advisory from the American Heart Association.

The health benefits of regular physical activity and the relation between physical inactivity and chronic disease morbidity and mortality are well established. Also clear is the fact that efforts to increase physical activity at the population level will require collective action by government, nongovernment, for-profit, and nonprofit entities working together at the local, state, and national levels. The US National Physical Activity Plan (NPAP), developed by the National Physical Activity Plan Alliance, of which the American Heart Association (AHA) is a member, is designed to facilitate this collective action, to help organizations from all sectors of society work together to increase physical activity in all segments of the American population. The purposes of this advisory are to summarize the data that describe the health benefits of regular physical activity and the public health burden of low levels of physical activity, to describe the NPAP and the role it will play in increasing population levels of physical activity, and to encourage readers of Circulation to join the AHA’s efforts to promote its implementation. As summarized in Table 1, there is substantial evidence supporting the benefits of regular physical activity to prevent a wide variety of disease conditions and to enhance quality of life. Interestingly, there is less of an appreciation of noncardiovascular benefits of lifestyle physical activity and structured exercise, and this is an area of great opportunity for educating the public and healthcare practitioners. View this table: Table 1. The Health Benefits of Regular Physical Activity Physical inactivity is rapidly becoming a major global concern and is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide.2,3 As noted by Kohl and colleagues, “In view of the prevalence, global reach, and health effect of physical inactivity, the issue should be appropriately described as pandemic, with far-reaching health, economic, environmental, and social consequences.”4 According …

Using online narratives to explore participant experiences in a residential environmental education program

Field-based, residential environmental education programs are immersive, science-rich learning experiences that aim to achieve educational, personal growth, and behavioral outcomes. Evaluations of such programs typically use pre- and post-surveys or interviews and, in some cases, participant observation. Understanding how participants respond to, and make meaning of, their experiences in the moment is an understudied facet that could improve program outcomes; thus, this study explored participant narratives of their experience through online journaling, or ‘blogging'. We piloted the blogging activity with students during their participation in a four-to-five-day program and conducted follow-up retrospective evaluation upon students' return to the classroom. Our findings demonstrate that connection to place, personal growth, and identity were critical aspects of the participant experience; these aspects may be conditioned by participants' previous nature experiences, as well as access to nature. We reflect on the utility of blogging in assessing intermediary and ultimate programmatic outcomes.

Diabetes nurse case management: Improving glucose control: 10 years of quality improvement follow-up data

The purpose of this retrospective case-control review is to determine the effectiveness of a registered nurse case managers (RNCMs) certified diabetes educator (CDE) quality improvement case management program. RNCMs have a long tradition of providing chronic care intervention, particularly for the high-risk diabetes population with glycosylated hemoglobin (A1C) of 9% or more. However, limited data are available with regard to evaluation of such programs in a Veterans Health Administration population. ResultsA large population (N=3956) of high-risk veterans with a baseline A1C of 9% or more (mean=10.6%) was seen by the RNCM's. Paired T-tests of A1C after the last RNCM visit showed a statistically significant A1C reduction (p<0.001) (mean=8.5%), after 14–26 months of intervention. ConclusionsRNCMs clinical intervention demonstrated significant A1C reduction (~2%). This is an important finding for health care policy makers for planning interventions with respect to long-term management of diabetes mellitus.

Collusion with denial: leadership development and its evaluation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate ways to gain deeper understanding of the evaluation challenge by reporting on insights about the impact of a leadership development program. It focusses on participants’ reflective post-course analysis of their learning, comparing this to a traditional evaluative analysis. Recently there has been a greater focus on programs to develop leaders who have the requisite cognitive and behavioral complexity to lead in challenging environments. However models for the evaluation of such programs often rely on methodologies that assume learning of specific skills rather than assessment of how well participants are able to cognitively and behaviorally adapt to uncertain and complex environments. Design/methodology/approach – The leadership development program was evaluated in two stages and the findings compared. Stage 1 elicited responses to the program using a traditional evaluation approach. Stage 2 involved 30 semi-structured interviews with the participants exploring the connections made between their development experience, work environment and approach to challenge. Findings – Evaluation approaches which focus on assessing reflection about personal learning provide greater detail on learning experience than traditional approaches to evaluation and can increase our understanding of the broader impact of leadership development programs. Current evaluation practices are mostly traditional despite dissatisfaction with outcomes. There are functional and financial benefits flowing from this practice suggesting collusion with denial between the suppliers and purchasers of leadership development and posing a question of causation. Originality/value – This study supports the use of qualitative evaluation techniques and in particular a focus on post-learning reflection to increase understanding of the impact of leadership development programs. The increased understanding provided by this type of evaluation can play a significant role in both the design of leader development programs and the creation of strategic alignment between business strategy, the purpose of leadership development interventions, learning objectives, program design and program evaluation.

Wellness Programs at Firefighter and Police Workplaces: A Systematic Review

Objectives This systematic review summarizes the literature on the health effects of wellness programs at police and firefighter workplaces. The review also considers process outcomes and economic evaluations of such programs. Methods A systematic search of articles published from January 1, 2000 through September 1, 2012 in 13 databases was conducted. Data on 7 studies from 9 articles were extracted. An assessment of the methodological quality of the studies was conducted. Results Studies showed acceptable completion rates and high satisfaction with programs, but mixed results for changes in individual outcomes. Conclusion Empirical evidence for effective health and wellness programs in police and firefighter populations is scarce. Better evaluation and documentation of such programs is needed to advance this field of research.

Impact of housing improvement and the socio-physical environment on the mental health of children's carers: a cohort study in Australian Aboriginal communities.

BackgroundThe mental health of carers is an important proximate factor in the causal web linking housing conditions to child health, as well as being important in its own right. Improved understanding of the nature of the relationships between housing conditions, carer mental health and child health outcomes is therefore important for informing the development of housing programs. This paper examines the relationship between the mental health of the carers of young children, housing conditions, and other key factors in the socio-physical environment.MethodsThis analysis is part of a broader prospective cohort study of children living in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia at the time of major new community housing programs. Carer’s mental health was assessed using two validated scales: the Affect Balance scale and the Brief Screen for Depression. The quality of housing infrastructure was assessed through detailed surveys. Secondary explanatory variables included a range of socio-environmental factors, including validated measures of stressful life events. Hierarchical regression modelling was used to assess associations between outcome and explanatory variables at baseline, and associations between change in housing conditions and change in outcomes between baseline and follow-up.ResultsThere was no clear or consistent evidence of a causal relationship between the functional state of household infrastructure and the mental health of carers of young children. The strongest and most consistent associations with carer mental health were the measures of negative life events, with a dose–response relationship, and adjusted odds ratio of over 6 for carers in the highest stress exposure category at baseline, and consistent associations in the follow up analysis.ConclusionsThe findings highlight the need for housing programs to be supported by social, behavioral and community-wide environmental programs if potential health gains are to be more fully realized, and for rigorous evaluation of such programs for the purpose of informing future housing initiatives.

Occupational safety and health education and training for underserved populations.

This article presents an analysis of the essential elements of effective occupational safety and health education and training programs targeting underserved communities. While not an exhaustive review of the literature on occupational safety and health training, the paper provides a guide for practitioners and researchers to the key factors they should consider in the design and implementation of training programs for underserved communities. It also addresses issues of evaluation of such programs, with specific emphasis on considerations for programs involving low-literacy and limited-English-speaking workers.

Paradoxical correlates of a facilitative parenting programme in prison—counter-productive intervention or first signs of responsible parenthood?

PurposeParenting programmes are rarely part of prisoners' rehabilitation, and evaluations of such programmes are lacking.

Impact of conditional cash transfers on maternal and newborn health.

Maternal and newborn health (MNH) is a high priority for global health and is included among the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, the slow decline in maternal and newborn mortality jeopardizes achievements of the targets of MDGs. According to UNICEF, 60 million women give birth outside of health facilities, and family planning needs are satisfied for only 50%. Further, skilled birth attendance and the use of antenatal care are most inequitably distributed in maternal and newborn health interventions in low- and middle-income countries. Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes have been shown to increase health service utilization among the poorest but little is written on the effects of such programmes on maternal and newborn health. We carried out a systematic review of studies on CCT that report maternal and newborn health outcomes, including studies from 8 countries. The CCT programmes have increased antenatal visits, skilled attendance at birth, delivery at a health facility, and tetanus toxoid vaccination for mothers and reduced the incidence of low birthweight. The programmes have not had a significant impact on fertility while the impact on maternal and newborn mortality has not been well-documented thus far. Given these positive effects, we make the case for further investment in CCT programmes for maternal and newborn health, noting gaps in knowledge and providing recommendations for better design and evaluation of such programmes. We recommend more rigorous impact evaluations that document impact pathways and take factors, such as cost-effectiveness, into account.

Editors’ Summary

Editors’ Summary Raquel Bernal, Marcela Eslava, Ugo Panizza, and Roberto Rigobón This issue of Economía consists of four papers. The first paper by Gladys López-Acevedo and Mónica Tinajero-Bravo looks at the effects of several programs aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises in Mexico on firm performance in the long term. The second paper by Eduardo Lora and Johanna Fajardo compares perception of one’s social ranking with objective measures of social ranking to find that there is a large difference between the two, partly because individuals incorporate a wide variety of wealth measures in their assessment apart from income. Verónica Amarante, Mery Ferrando, and Andrea Vigorito study the effects of conditional cash transfers on school attendance and child labor among teenagers in Uruguay in the third paper. Finally, Rodrigo Taborda discusses possible media bias in the reporting of exchange rate–related news during revaluation episodes in comparison with reporting during devaluation episodes in the fourth and last paper of this volume. In the first paper, Gladys López-Acevedo and Mónica Tinajero-Bravo estimate the effects of a variety of support programs aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises in Mexico by using a novel ten-year panel data set of firm-level data from 1994 to 2005. These programs comprise primarily business development services such as consulting services, training programs for workers, quality control practices, and export promotion, among others, and programs that support R&D activities. Rigorous evaluations of such programs are scarce, particularly in developing countries, owing to lack of appropriate data sets that contain longitudinal information and allow some correction for self-selection into program participation. López-Acevedo and Tinajero-Bravo link a firm panel data set with program participation information from a different source to estimate treatment effects by using fixed-effects models. The longitudinal dimension of the data proves to be extremely useful in allowing identification of effects that take a long time to realize after program participation begins. [End Page vii] The results indicate that three of the four programs for small and mediumsized enterprises assessed have been successful in improving firm outcomes such as sales, value added per worker, and exports. Programs that promote R&D activities have been particularly effective in these dimensions. However, these effects only show after three to four years following the start of program participation, so they are undetectable in cross-section data sets or panel data sets with a shorter span. In some cases, effects continue to increase (as much as threefold) from year 3 to year 10 of program participation. Alessandro Maffioli highlights several contributions of the paper. He notes that the construction of a long-term panel data set allows López-Acevedo and Tinajero-Bravo to address a variety of questions unanswered in the literature, owing to lack of appropriate data. However, Maffioli also indicates that it would have been extremely useful to understand not only individual program effects but also complementarities among them. In particular, the possibility of understanding coordination and sequencing of different policy instruments available for small and medium-sized enterprises is important for policy design. In the second paper, Eduardo Lora and Johanna Fajardo use a rich data set for sixteen Latin American countries to assess the gap between perceived social ranking and objective social ranking based on income measures. After showing that the gap is large, the authors proceed to explore the factors that most explain this difference. By using the usual definitions of middle class (income ranges from US$2 to US$13 per day or from 0.5 to 1.5 times the median income), the authors show that only 69 percent of middle-income individuals classify themselves as such according to the first definition and only about 45 percent do so according to the second one. The authors indicate that individuals consider a wide variety of measures of wealth apart from income when assessing their social ranking. These include human capital (education), access to financial services, access to public utilities, and ownership of durable goods such as a car, washing machine, television, or computer, and they also consider the presence of children in the household...

A Review of Programs That Targeted Environmental Determinants of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health

Objective: Effective interventions to improve population and individual health require environmental change as well as strategies that target individual behaviours and clinical factors. This is the basis of implementing an ecological approach to health programs and health promotion. For Aboriginal People and Torres Strait Islanders, colonisation has made the physical and social environment particularly detrimental for health. Methods and Results: We conducted a literature review to identify Aboriginal health interventions that targeted environmental determinants of health, identifying 21 different health programs. Program activities that targeted environmental determinants of health included: Caring for Country; changes to food supply and/or policy; infrastructure for physical activity; housing construction and maintenance; anti-smoking policies; increased workforce capacity; continuous quality improvement of clinical systems; petrol substitution; and income management. Targets were categorised according to Miller’s Living Systems Theory. Researchers using an Indigenous community based perspective more often identified interpersonal and community-level targets than were identified using a Western academic perspective. Conclusions: Although there are relatively few papers describing interventions that target environmental determinants of health, many of these addressed such determinants at multiple levels, consistent to some degree with an ecological approach. Interpretation of program targets sometimes differed between academic and community-based perspectives, and was limited by the type of data reported in the journal articles, highlighting the need for local Indigenous knowledge for accurate program evaluation. Implications: While an ecological approach to Indigenous health is increasingly evident in the health research literature, the design and evaluation of such programs requires a wide breadth of expertise, including local Indigenous knowledge.

A Controlled Evaluation of a High School Biomedical Pipeline Program: Design and Methods

Given limited funding for school-based science education, non-school-based programs have been developed at colleges and universities to increase the number of students entering science- and health-related careers and address critical workforce needs. However, few evaluations of such programs have been conducted. We report the design and methods of a controlled trial to evaluate the Stanford Medical Youth Science Program's Summer Residential Program (SRP), a 25-year-old university-based biomedical pipeline program. This 5-year matched cohort study uses an annual survey to assess educational and career outcomes among four cohorts of students who participate in the SRP and a matched comparison group of applicants who were not chosen to participate in the SRP. Matching on sociodemographic and academic background allows control for potential confounding. This design enables the testing of whether the SRP has an independent effect on educational- and career-related outcomes above and beyond the effects of other factors such as gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and pre-intervention academic preparation. The results will help determine which curriculum components contribute most to successful outcomes and which students benefit most. After 4 years of follow-up, the results demonstrate high response rates from SRP participants and the comparison group with completion rates near 90%, similar response rates by gender and ethnicity, and little attrition with each additional year of follow-up. This design and methods can potentially be replicated to evaluate and improve other biomedical pipeline programs, which are increasingly important for equipping more students for science- and health-related careers.

Evaluation of Centers of Excellence Program for Knee and Hip Replacement

Medicare and private plans are encouraging individuals to seek care at hospitals that are designated as centers of excellence. Few evaluations of such programs have been conducted. This study examines a large national initiative that designated hospitals as centers of excellence for knee and hip replacement. Comparison of outcomes and costs associated with knee and hip replacement at designated hospitals and other hospitals. Retrospective claims analysis of approximately 54 million enrollees. Individuals with insurance from one of the sponsors of this centers of excellence program who underwent a primary knee or hip replacement in 2007-2009. Primary outcomes were any complication within 30 days of discharge and costs within 90 days after the procedure. A total of 80,931 patients had a knee replacement and 39,532 patients had a hip replacement of which 52.2% and 56.5%, respectively, were performed at a designated hospital. Designated hospitals had a larger number of beds and were more likely to be an academic center. Patients with a knee replacement at designated hospitals did not have a statistically significantly lower overall complication rate with an odds ratio of 0.90 (P=0.08). Patients with hip replacement treated at designated hospitals had a statistically significant lower risk of complications with an odds ratio of 0.80 (P=0.002). There was no significant difference in 90-day costs for either procedure. Hospitals designated as joint replacement centers of excellence had lower rates of complications for hip replacement, but there was no statistically significant difference for knee replacement. It is important to validate the criteria used to designate centers of excellence.

Special Issue on New Paradigms in Evaluating Leadership Development

The Problem Evaluation of leadership development programs has been criticized recently for being based too much on structured evaluation models that do not account for more broad based outcomes and interpretations of leadership development. The Solution This special issue develops some core themes around enabling and enacting leadership development evaluation in organizations. The focus is on highlighting innovative ways of evaluating leadership development that fits more comfortably with contemporary leadership theory. This link with contemporary leadership literature, in turn, brings about thinking around mindsets, culture, partnerships, relationships, and the interdependency of leaders and leadership in organizations, some of the core themes represented in this special issue. These themes are expressed as new paradigms as there appears limited discussion in the literature regarding their use in evaluating leadership development. The purpose of the special issue will be to highlight differing and innovative approaches to leadership development evaluation rooted in experiences of delivering such programs in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Each article expresses novel approaches to the evaluation of leadership programs that can be inculcated into practice across a wide variety of organizations. The Stakeholders Leadership development programs have started to become prolific in organizations both public and private sector based. This has provided a challenge to human resources professionals in the evaluation of such programs that are increasingly becoming complex in nature and starting to use innovative and unusual approaches. This special issue therefore delves into contemporary leadership theory and relates this to the practice of delivering and evaluating programs across organizations. The outcome therefore will help HR professionals identify key aspects to take account of when evaluating leadership development in and across organizations, and will set the basis for further empirical research and theoretical reflection on the topic.

A Cultural Approach to Evaluating Leadership Development

The Problem Current thinking around the evaluation of leadership development programs pays insufficient attention to the way that learning to lead becomes embedded and affected by the cultural context within which leaders and leadership operate. The Solution We propose an enhanced appreciation of cultural factors, organizationally, regionally, and nationally, when evaluating leadership development programs. We go on to suggest a cultural approach to the evaluation of such programs. This more cultural view enables a greater appreciation of current and contemporary accounts of leadership in the literature that are of a more distributed and cultural nature. This view also enables a more significant appreciation of shifting cultures, contexts, and situations within the process of learning that is a central element of leadership development. The Stakeholders This article will appeal to researchers in the area of leadership and leadership development, as well as those engaged in the design, delivery, and evaluation of leadership development in a professional capacity.