96157 - 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

Considering the advanced nature of the contents of this course (and students’ previous experiences), the selection and attendance of this course is NOT RECOMMENDED to Bachelor students of the Erasmus + program. Alternatively, the “Organizational change and development” course may be more affordable for such students.

 

This course concerns two main topics: 1) how to design organizational interventions and evaluation interventions; 2) how to conduct research within organizations in order to monitor development and effectiveness of interventions, at individual, group and organization level.

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) Posavac, E.J., Carey, R.G. (2007) Program evaluation : methods and case studies, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Carey and Associates, 7. ed. (chapters 1-4, 7, 10, 13) (thjis books is 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 (article 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 empirical article/s 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 you will have to design an evaluation program of one of them. Anyway, should you find another intervention project, of interest for you, after checking with the instructor, you may use that project as a starting point.

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