Subject areas you need to know

(working on this...)
When doing program evaluation, you need to have some knowledge in a variety of areas.  Programs take place in organizations, so it helps to know something about organizations.  Programs also involve people working together, so social psychology is useful.  And so on.

Organizations


Organizational Theory: Determinants of Structure    http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/orgtheory.htm    brief introduction to some concepts used in describing and understanding organizational structure. More notes are here  http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/handouts.htm  brief introductions to various organization topics.


Formal Organizations.  http://www.unc.edu/~nielsen/  See the class, then class notes. Has some class notes with some basic info on organization behavior.


Overview of Organizational Change   http://www.managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm   Assembled by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD . Links to resources, and some basic overviews by Dr. McNamara.


Smith, M. K. (2001) 'The learning organization', the encyclopedia of informal education,  http://www.infed.org/biblio/learning-organization.htm   summary of some theories of the learning organization, and links to other summaries related to learning orgs (some of which don't work).


Performance Management   http://www.opm.gov/perform/   see the Overview for a very brief guide to effective organizations, well, the 'official' version of what an organization needs to be effective.  A few other guides are here too.


US DHHS has this about management   http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/Program%20Design%20and%20Management   then click on Management and Administration.  This site has some interesting articles, such as  "The Effective Organization: Getting from Objectives to Results"   here   "The author describes two fundamental organizational models: leadership and management."    These brief versions are from Head Start Bulletins.  Some are available here   http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/resources/ECLKC_Bookstore/   such as Conflict Management   here  



Organization change and resistance to change

Managing Successful Organizational Change in the Public Sector. Sergio Fernandez, Hal G. Rainey. Public Administration Review
Volume 66 Page 168  - March 2006.  http://www.aspanet.org/scriptcontent/index_par_t2p_archives.cfm   There are also commentaries here by Mary Tschirhart, and by Patrick E. Connor and  Fred Thompson, which offer a very brief summary and discussion.

J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2000 Mar–Apr; 7(2): 116–124.  Managing Change, An Overview. Nancy M. Lorenzi and Robert T. Riley.    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=61464   says, for example, "Human beings do not necessarily resist change automatically; however, many people do resist being changed, i.e., having changes imposed on them." and "change always requires the effort to learn the new, which is a loss in terms of time and energy that could have been used elsewhere."


Teams

Team Diagnostics   http://team-diagnostics.com/   has some research and theory, and explanations of team behavior.   This site is from Richard Hackman, Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University, and well known expert on organizations.  This page   http://team-diagnostics.com/index-2.html   has brief info about "What factors improve team effectiveness?"  There is also a little more info in this technical description of the survey here   http://team-diagnostics.com/index-1.html   and see some pages from Dr. Hackman's book here   http://www.leadingteams.org/    The first couple of pages from each chapter are available here.


Characteristics of effective teams and characteristics of ineffective teams   http://www.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/teams.shtml   from a management class.   This is for students to develop effectvie student teams, but gives a few basics on team work that should apply to anyone.


Building an Effective Team   http://www.business.uiuc.edu/~pellinge/building_an_effective_team.htm   some basic ideas


Welcome to Managing for Quality   http://erc.msh.org/quality/index.cfm   has sections on Building Teams  http://erc.msh.org/quality/map.cfm#team  


A "Sweet 16" Of Rules About Teamwork   http://appel.nasa.gov/ask/issues/07/overview/7_resources_letterfromtheeditor.html   also has a full article of 99 rules of teamwork.



Social Psychology


Social psychology is important because it deals, in general, with groups, how people interact with groups and how people interact with each other. These are some of the theories.

Social Psychology basics  http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/socpsy.html   brief chapters outlining some basic concepts in social psych, including social learning, persuasion, social economics (making decisions about social activities, etc), conformity.
 

Social psychology network   http://www.socialpsychology.org/     also links to links


Behavior or behavior change

These are pretty brief reviews, but can give you some ideas of what to look for.

Icek Aizen's theory of planned behavior   http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~aizen/index.html   click on "TpB" then the model.

Behavior Change Theories and Models   http://www.csupomona.edu/~jvgrizzell/best_practices/bctheory.html   very brief  review of theories.

Center for Health Communication Research   http://chcr.umich.edu/   click on 'how we do it' and then 'health behavior theories'.

Theory at a Glance   https://cissecure.nci.nih.gov/ncipubs/details.asp?pid=1302   This is about health promotion but also reviews theories of behavior.

Changing Minds   http://www.changeminds.org/index.htm   "the largest site in the world on all aspects of how we change what others think, believe, feel and do. "  An interesting approach to how to change minds.


Self Efficacy

Information on Self Efficacy   http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/self-efficacy.html   has definitions, articles, chapters, the place to start.

Self efficacy   http://www.positivepractices.com/Efficacy/SelfEfficacy.html   brief discussions of definitions, history, etc.


Other stuff about organizations

The Management Upgrade Shop   http://jessebrogan.home.att.net/   by Jesse Brogan. There are some interesting free presentations or papers about organizations. Mr. Brogan also has pdf versions of The Principles of Scientific Management and Shop Management by Frederick Taylor on his site.


page last updated 12/25/08
last checked 12/25/08
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Susan Losh's home page    http://mailer.fsu.edu/~slosh//Index.htm    lists a class:
Social psychology, not quite ready on 2/13/09, but will be soon.