Outline for Session 13: Evaluating your own Practice

·         Monitoring Client Progress

·         Historical overview of program evaluation

·         Program evaluation approaches

·         Practitioner-Friendly Design

·         Feasible Assessment Techniques

This week's topic is the final step of the evidence-based practice model:  Monitoring the implementation of intervention.  You will cover these concepts in detail in your two research courses during the second year of the MSW program, so this is intended to be only an introduction.

Although many of the same research tools we have discussed this semester are used in evaluation, they are used in a very different way, and people often confuse the two.  While research is intended to confirm that a given intervention works and is applicable beyond the original study, evaluation is intended only to show that clients make the changes expected from the research data about a particular intervention. So, we will discuss the differences between research and evaluation and talk about how research tools can be adapted to this new purpose.