Best-Kept-Secret Career: Program Evaluator

December 11, 2008 RSS Feed Print

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Snapshot: Not withstanding politicians' rhetoric, is Head Start really worth the taxpayer dollars? What are the benefits and liabilities of online versus in-person training of solar energy installers? How might a teen-pregnancy prevention program further reduce teen pregnancy? How might the United Way reduce its overhead without diminishing benefits to clients? Program evaluators address such questions. This career has lots of upsides. It's fun getting immersed in a different program every few weeks or months, and it feels good to know that you are key to making programs better, or deciding whether one is worth continuing. You get to use a combination of observation, interviewing, questionnaires, presentation skills, and statistics. But don't worry if you're not a stats whiz; advanced statistics usually aren't necessary, and if they are, you can hire a consultant.

Getting there: Some evaluators have only a bachelor's degree with no special training. Yet some evaluations utilize Ph.D.'s from a specialized training program, such as Claremont Graduate School, UCLA, or Western Michigan University.

Learn more: Basic Guide to Program Evaluation

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This career may work out poorly if you want to make a real difference in people's lives, seek real insights about government programs, want to deal with people or want to do high quality work. Depending on the employer, there may be pressure to bend the results a certain way or to draw conclusions not supported by the evidence. Government clients (e.g. state department) have threatened to sue if report findings are not altered. You might spend months or years on a study that few people will read, that does not discover much of use, or that gets shelved by an agency director. Notice how agencies in the Bush administration (and others') bullied agencies to change their report findings, including GAO, HHS, GAO and notice the extremely flawed if not fraudulent nation security studies of NIST and FEMA. Private sector analysts working for clients, without financial independence from them, may experience the same problems. Finally, if you are hired for a project in the private sector, will they have a position for you after the project is completed? However, if you don't need those things, such jobs have the benefit that you are using your mind and the pay is substantial. See program analyst.
http://www.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2008/12/11/best-kept-secret-career-program-analyst.html?msg=1 If you don't have a Ph.D. you can work as a research assistant for a program evaluator or analyst. Decide if you expect to do qualitative or quantitative style reports. If quantitative, you will usually need knowledge of statistics and perhaps software such as SAS or SPSS or STATA. I dissent from the statement above that you are key to making programs better, or deciding whether one is worth continuing. Many programs are cut or continued not based on such studies but rather based on ideology, anecdotes or political slogans.

John of IL 2:27PM January 06, 2010

what's the salary range for a program evaluator

Raymond Carver of MD 12:07AM January 03, 2010

The AEA conference draws in about 3,000 evaluators every year and is a fantastic opportunity to get a feel for the discipline and meet experienced evaluators you can job shadow or learn from in other ways. The conference is incredibly welcoming for newbies, with 'ambassadors' assigned to look after first-time attendees. This year the meeting is on Orlando, FL Nov 11-15, with some fantastic (and very reasonably priced!) pre-conference professional development workshops on offer. Unlike many professional conferences, the Big Names have a strong presence and actually talk to the little people. Come along! More info at http://eval.org

Jane Davidson 6:08PM September 22, 2009