85400 - Design and Evaluation of Interventions

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students will: - know main approaches to intervention design and evaluation tools in organizational settings - be able to design and evaluate interventions in Organizational Psychology.

Course contents

1. Design of interventions and design of intervention evaluation

2. Evaluation processes and principles (main aspects, basic models, formative and summative evaluations, realistic evaluation)

3. Research designs for the evaluation of WOP interventions (quasi experimental and longitudinal designs, within subjects and single case design)

Readings/Bibliography

a) Owen, J.M. (2007) Program evaluation: forms and approaches, New York: Guilford Press, 3. Ed. (chapters 1-3) or, alternatively, Posavac, E.J., Carey, R.G. (2007) Program evaluation : methods and case studies, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Carey and Associates, 7. ed. (chapters 1-3) (both books are available in the Psychology library)

b) Komaki J., Goltz S. (2001) Within-group research designs: going beyond program evaluation questions, in Merle Johnson, Redmon, Mawhinney, Handbook of organizational performance, New York: Haworth Press (pp. 81-86, 92-106).

c) Pawson R. & Tilley N. (2004) Realist evaluation (available on moodle platform)

Teaching methods

The course will use one or more of the following teaching methods:

- lectures,

- a case simulation.

- small group discussions,

- students’ oral presentation.

Assessment methods

Learning will be evaluated with the following two tasks/assignments:

1) reaction paper on one empirical article on evaluation of intervention;

2) design of an evaluation intervention.

Each task will be assessed on a scale from 0 to 30; thus total score will range between 0 and 60; this total score will be averaged from 0 to 30 and that will be the final score for this course.

For task 1 - the reaction paper - a list of articles to be used will be posted on the course website.

For task 2 – the evaluation of intervention - some projects will be provided, and students will have to design an evaluation program for one of them. Anyway, should the student find another intervention project, of interest for him/her, this can be considered after discussion with the professor.

Teaching tools

The course will use one or more of the following teaching methods:

- lectures,

- simulation,

- group case study.

Office hours

See the website of Salvatore Zappalà