Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
experimental design are speaking of characteristics inherent
to evaluation theory that account for a sharply limited utility.
The critics are not suggesting that formative evaluation
would be more successful if the experimental designs were
more precisely constructed, if randomization of subjects
were more diligently pursued, or if experimental methods
were more carefully practiced. According to the critics,
experimental method in program evaluation, especially RCT,
is inappropriate if not defective.
The importance of this matter can hardly be overstressed.
As indicated above, feedback of evaluative fi ndings is of vital
importance for improving the process in training and
development. If there is an incompatibility between feedback
and the “experimental method,” one obviously must be
abandoned. But to abandon the former, evaluators forego
their mandate to provide timely and relevant information for
program adaptation. To abandon the latter, they seriously
limit the research techniques they have available for
evaluating the program; instead of Donald Campbell and
Julian Stanley's famous
Experimental and Quasi-
experimental Designs
, the formative evaluator is restricted
to just the quasi-experimental designs and even more inferior
approaches, such as “pre-experimental designs.”
12
As Green
states, “RCTs are the gold standard of treatment trial
methodology, and to deprive complex (often psychosocial)
interventions of their imprimatur is potentially to undervalue
these areas in an evidence-based climate.”
13
Moreover, this
limitation sacrifi ces what rigor the evaluators' discipline has.
However, we fi nd that the critics of “experimental design”
have misplaced their criticism.
The next section will give an existence proof that formative
evaluation can be conducted within the framework of
experimental design, and evaluative fi ndings can at the
same time be provided for improvement of the training
