Program evaluation for social workers: Foundations of evidence-based programs (Sixth Edition) Richard M Grinnell,Jr,Peter A Gabor and Yvonne A Unrau

Reviewed by: Lucie Shuker, University of Bedfordshire, England

The purpose of this book is to prepare social work students to participate in, produce, and consume evaluations. As a textbook for students it is successfully direct and accessible and helpfully structured into chapters which, taken together, provide a thorough grounding in all aspects of evaluation. Now in its sixth edition, all the chapters have been updated and four new chapters have been added, as well as a substantial glossary (additional chapters include ‘The Evaluation Process’, ‘Ethics’, ‘Evaluation Design’ and ‘Measuring Instruments’). The authors provide a lengthy definition of evaluation which provides a structure for the four parts of the book: Part 1 – Preparing for Evaluations; Part 2 – Doing Evaluations; Part 3 – Evaluation Toolkit; and Part 4 – Making Decisions with Data. Text is interrupted with plenty of diagrams, checklists, flowcharts, case studies, and lists of advantages/disadvantages to different approaches to evaluation decisions – all of which are valuable references and tools.

Although published by Oxford University Press the book is written for a North American audience, and this limits its applicability to readers in other national contexts. The early chapters position its approach to evaluation within the regulatory frameworks for American social workers, and its resources and materials are aligned with core competences identified by the Council on Social Work Education in the USA. Other readers would therefore need to be attentive to some culturally specific meanings (e.g. the role of an ‘administrator’). A website accompanies the book and although nearly all its resources are from the United States, this still adds tremendous value through extra material that can be easily browsed, including an overview of how to evaluate online resources.

One of the strengths of this textbook is its insistence on programs having a sound internal logic to which evaluations can provide useful feedback. Chapter three in particular advocates that individual social work practice should flow from ‘SMART’ goals which are directly linked to program objectives and an agency’s mission and goal. To this end it provides a basic toolkit for building theory-based programs and their evaluations. The reader will be able to visualise a highly coherent organisation built from first principles of need, and program design based on mission objectives and evaluated and improved on an ongoing basis. Fortunately the authors regularly acknowledge the actual realities of social work and evaluations. A section on the inappropriate use of evaluations, for example, is insightful and makes its points powerfully.

The authors aim to prepare readers for more advanced evaluation texts, and assert that students would need to consult separate social research methods textbooks to actually undertake an evaluation. Nevertheless there is substantial coverage of research designs, which focuses more heavily on quantitative approaches. Threats to internal and external validity are presented, with titles that may intimidate a social work student without extensive knowledge of research. The chapter on ethics will support social work students and first time evaluators to consider the ethical considerations embedded in every stage of the process - including whether or not an evaluation should even be pursued. The American context meant that concepts like Fraser/Gillick competence were missing, which would be core to any consideration of evaluation with children and young people being undertaken in the UK context. Social workers should be familiar with the goal of cultural competency, but by devoting a chapter to this issue the authors rightly insist that all evaluators are similarly self-aware.

The book will continue to be very useful as an introduction to evaluation for social workers. However there is a risk that it will remain under-utilised, given the strong separation of practice and research in most social work departments/universities. Given the book’s aims it is interesting that there is no real discussion of action research, or of quite how social workers might practically be involved in evaluative work. It may be more useful for students and social workers who aspire to managerial or commissioning roles and who would value learning about needs assessments, program design, efficiency evaluations, and using data to make decisions and improve an organisation.