Existing Evaluation Strategies Research Articles

Exploring the potential of theory-based evaluation to strengthen marine spatial planning practice

Marine spatial planning (MSP) is an approach to ocean management with an increasingly global reach. However, existing evaluation strategies have yet to ascertain the extent to which MSP achieves social, ecological, and economic goals to benefit coastal environments and human communities. Here, we experiment with a theory-based approach as a means of overcoming long-standing obstacles to MSP evaluation. We developed and applied an eight-step evaluation protocol to five diverse cases of MSP, focusing on the evaluative feasibility of the protocol as we moved from identifying objectives to assessing the sustainability of outcomes. We found evidence that theory-based evaluation (operationalized via theories of change) can bridge quantitative outcome and qualitative process evaluations, two essential approaches that on their own produce incomplete pictures of MSP. Our work suggests that a theory-based approach can enhance opportunities to incorporate diverse knowledge sources and data types into outcome evaluations and thus better capture complex social, political, and historical dimensions that are difficult to quantify but critical to MSP success. We also uncovered likely challenges to implementing theory-based evaluation for MSP, including the apparent data- and time-intensive nature of the approach. We found that applying theory-based evaluation is difficult for plans lacking well-defined goals, objectives, and intended outcomes and that increased documentation of planning motivations and the planning process are needed to rigorously evaluate MSP. Ultimately, we join others in the marine conservation and management fields who are optimistic about theory-based evaluation. Our evaluation protocol provides a first step towards a practical guide to accelerate the use of this assessment approach.

A Systematic Learning on Variety of Recommender Systems for Online Commodities

In a sophisticated high-end product market, all firms often come up with a vast number of goods to partake the market shares. Owing to the availability of enough information of various products that enters the market or due to lack of right information, customers are prone to the state of dilemma in comparing and choosing the most appropriate ones. In most of the cases, the product specifications are mentioned, still whether these features suit the customers need is a concern. Online reviews tend to benefit the consumers and the goods developers. Here again, finding out the more supportive reviews become a challenge. Considering these factors, this article intends to be particular in reviewing the existing evaluation strategies and recommender systems that have grown progressively favorable in present era and are employed widely for casual to commercial items.

On Performance and Efficiency of Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Actuators for Flow Control Applications

With further maturity and applicability of plasma actuator flow control it becomes increasingly important to classify and quantify the net efficiency of plasma actuators, taking into account their effect on the flow and including a careful analysis and evaluation of the corresponding energy requirements. The present work provides such an evaluation standard with a comprehensive discussion of plasma actuator performance and efficiency. Existing evaluation strategies are reviewed, contradictory definitions presently found in the literature are clarified, and all discussed quantities are ordered into a universal power-flow diagram, serving as a guideline to classify and quantify plasma-actuator performance in flow control applications.

Toward a Reliable Evaluation of Forecasting Systems for Plant Diseases: A Case Study Using Fusarium Head Blight of Wheat.

Despite great efforts to forecast plant diseases, many of the existing systems often fall short in providing farmers with accurate predictions. One of the main problems arises from the existence of year and location effects, so that more advanced procedures are required for evaluating existing systems in an unbiased manner. This paper illustrates the case of Fusarium head blight of winter wheat in Belgium. We present a new cross-validation strategy that enables the evaluation of the predictive performance of a forecasting system for years and locations that are different from the years and locations on which the forecast was developed. Four different cross-validation strategies and five regression techniques are used. The results demonstrated that traditional evaluation strategies are too optimistic in their predictions, whereas the cross-year cross-location validation strategy yielded more realistic outcomes. Using this procedure, the mean squared error increased and the coefficient of determination decreased in predicting disease severity and deoxynivalenol content, suggesting that existing evaluation strategies may generate a substantial optimistic bias. The strongest discrepancies between the cross-validation strategies were observed for multiple linear regression models.

Implications of multiple-choice testing in nursing education

The evaluation of knowledge/competence is understood as an essential component of nursing education and practice. As such, nurse educators have a plethora of existing evaluation strategies from which to choose. A common written evaluative format used across all higher education settings is multiple-choice testing. This evaluation approach is accepted as a 'user-friendly' strategy to assess knowledge. Researchers from the disciplines of psychology and education have long been concerned with the consequences of multiple-choice testing on learning outcomes, a discussion that is essentially absent from the nursing literature. The purpose of this paper is to address the professional implications of multiple-choice testing in nursing. The potential knowledge consequences for nurse-learners, and by extension the provision of care to healthcare recipients, resultant from use of this testing modality are addressed within the context of the implementation of best practice guidelines in a long-term care home in a mid-sized rural and northern Canadian community with both regulated and non-regulated care providers.

Mapping evaluation of UK childhood bereavement services

Abstract This article reports a study of evaluation strategies and tools currently used within UK child bereavement services. Data were sought from a representative sample of services across the UK on the evaluations’ users, the data requested, and organisations' existing evaluation strategies. The study found that child bereavement services were struggling with a considerable burden of demand for information from a range of users – chiefly funders and commissioners of services. However, a mapping exercise revealed that a considerable amount of the data required by evaluation users was the same, and that it was being obtained from evaluations that services overall were already undertaking. The most common forms of evaluation were post-intervention user satisfaction surveys of core interventions, using self-completion questionnaires. However, collection of basic data was limited and patchy, and evaluations of outcomes and organisational processes and reporting on the findings were less common. Based on the...

Challenges in evaluating childhood bereavement services

Abstract This paper discusses the evaluation of childhood bereavement services in the UK policy context and some of the challenges this presents. Two key difficulties are discussed: the lack of any clear, agreed outcomes from bereavement interventions with children, and the challenge of evaluating the complex social processes that bereavement interventions involve. Two recommendations are made to address these in the short term and to generate data for wider research. These are: to strengthen services' existing evaluation strategies, and to develop a routine evaluation package that can be used by all services. This would comprise a basic data set, a user satisfaction questionnaire, and a childhood bereavementfocused clinical outcome routine evaluation measure. In the longer term, further research is recommended, including UK-based longitudinal studies.

Towards a postpositivist approach to policy evaluation?

The normative ideal which currently governs policy evaluation has been outdated by the changing nature of demands on the evaluation process. For the small group of social scientists reviewed here, the growing complexity of policy evaluation demands that it take into account the normative dimensions of public policy. This approach remains in its infancy and much more work needs to be done on assessing the capacity of existing evaluation strategies to include these normative dimensions. At present the brightest promise for postpositivist policy evaluation is its ability to inform a new generation of evaluators about the politically contentious nature of such evaluation. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.