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The purpose of this study is to investigate the system of factors influencing the efficiency of internal evaluation in Polish secondary schools.

Data collected in interviews with evaluation experts and teachers on the barriers to the efficiency of internal evaluation and their causes were subjected to a qualitative cause-and-effect analysis.

Five barriers to the evaluation efficiency (6B model) and five actions of the school head stopping their impact (6A model) were identified. The latter include selecting the key evaluation function (3KEF model) and ensuring the conditions for efficiency in the improvement loop.

Although the research was carried out in Polish schools, the conclusions indicate regularities affecting organizations throughout the world.

Students’ educational needs may exceed the schools’ ability to meet them at class time mostly due to resource constraints. The implementation of the principle of equal opportunities in education requires continuous improvement of the efficiency of schools’ processes. Evaluation can help qualify tasks for improvement.

The level of engagement (reactive/active) of the school principal and teachers in evaluation and improvement is a crucial factor in overcoming the barriers to the efficiency of the school processes.

The ability to respond to the efficiency gaps of the school processes depends on the choice and efficiency of the KEF. The rationale for selecting the function and the schemes for its implementation have paradigmatic grounds.

This paper aims to present the process evaluation for a two‐year (2008‐2010) participatory action research project focusing on home‐school partnership in health learning, undertaken within the Schools for Health in Europe (SHE) in Eastern Finland.

Two intervention schools and two control schools (grade 5 pupils, parents, and selected school personnel) participated in a study. Process evaluation data were collected from intervention schools after 10 months of participation, by interviewing two classroom teachers and three families. In addition, program documents and relevant statistics were collected from schools during the intervention.

Teachers' opinions on the development process varied from more concrete expectations (School A teacher) to overall satisfaction to implementation (School B teacher). Parents believed that their children would benefit from the project later in life. The context and differences of the school environments were likely to affect the development process at the school level.

This paper demonstrates a process evaluation in two schools and, therefore, limits the generalizability of the findings.

The process evaluation was an essential part of this intervention study and may provide a useful structure and an example for process evaluation for future school‐based health intervention studies.

This study highlights the importance of planning the process evaluation structure before the start of the intervention, brings out the relevance of systematically assessing the process while it is ongoing, and illustrates process evaluation in an action research project.

Proposes a continuous participative evaluation process built on the formative evaluation paradigm. The benefits of this approach are that all the primary or core stakeholders, i.e. the users, top management and the technical specialists involved in the task of delivering information systems benefits, participate in the evaluation and the subsequent decision making associated with the project. These stakeholders are consequently involved in moulding and realising an information system which is targeted to meet real business needs rather than just investment and project management criteria. This approach ensures that high quality information systems that deliver direct business benefits with which the user community can identify are implemented. It implies a new focus that encompasses concentrating on and understanding the business issues and how the information system will deliver real value to the organisation. It is the view of the authors that formative evaluation can help to maximise business value from information systems.

This paper explores the growing interest of Health Service researchers in evaluating processes or process evaluation and discusses the relevance of this type of evaluation to the National Health Service (NHS( in the UK. Increased focus has been given to issues of evidence‐based health care since the introduction of the NHS R&D strategy in 1991. Nevertheless, there is a need to understand complex ways of working, particularly as changes in practice rarely follow a linear pattern. The basic principles of process evaluation and its links to social science methodologies are outlined, including the importance of context and the role of stakeholders, and how process evaluation can assist health professionals in their work is explored. It is then shown how the process evaluations linked to four initiatives designed to promote evidence‐based decision making or change clinicians’ behaviour were crucial for understanding the reasons for the outcomes of the initiatives.

Evaluation and measurement (E&M) remains a critical and debated topic among communication scholars and practice. Substantial research and professional efforts have been devoted to discussing what should be measured and which methods should be applied. Most of the E&M models seem to carry a positivist imprint. But, in real-life, organizations could not have clear aims, enough resources, or adequate informative systems to support E&M. Moreover, several contextual factors could affect the implementation of E&M management processes. The communication literature rarely highlights these factors. To fulfill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to theorize the contextual factors relevant to the management of the evaluation process.

A scoping literature review was carried out exploring the role of contextual factors and impact of contextual factors on E&M management processes. More specifically, the review examines the contribution provided by program evaluation and performance measurement (PM) fields of research.

The paper provides a scoping review of program evaluation and PM approaches. Additionally, it explains how both streams of thought argued the importance of contextual factors, such as organizational, relational, cultural and communicative factors, for the success of any evaluation processes. The study underlined that the main evaluation models used in the field of communication have overlooked these studies and put on evidence the role of contextual factors in effectively executing communication E&M.

The paper enriches the dominant rationale concerning the E&M management processes by incorporating literature on: program evaluation; and PM. The analysis could provide useful insights also from a professional perspective, by helping practitioners for a contextual assessment of strategic communication programs and activities.

The setting up of e-university has been slow-going. Much of e-university slow progress has been attributed to poor business models, branding, disruptive technologies, lack of organisational structure that accommodates such challenges, and failure to integrate a blended approach. One of the stumbling blocks, among many, is the handling of evaluation process. E-university models do not provide much automation compared to the original brick-and-mortar classroom model of delivery. The underlining technologies may not have been supportive; however, the conditions are changing, and more evaluation tools are becoming available for academics. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper identifies the extent of current online evaluation processes. In this process, the team reviews the case study of a UK E-University using Adobe Connect learning model that mirrors much of the physical processes as well as online exams and evaluation tools. Using the Riva model, the paper compares the physical with the online evaluation processes for e-universities to identify differences in these processes to evaluate the benefits of e-learning. As a result, the models can help us to identify the processes where improvements can take place for automating the process and evaluate the impact of this change.

The paper concludes that this process can be significantly shortened and provide a fairer outcome but there remain some challenges for e-university processes to overcome.

This paper examines the vital quality assurance processes in academia as more universities move towards process automation, blended or e-university business models. Using the case study of Arden University online distance learning, the paper demonstrates, through modelling and analysis that the process of online automation of the evaluation process is achieved with significant efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a workshop process to enhance the learning of employee-driven innovating (LEDI) and to evaluate in multiple ways the practical effects of the LEDI process, which aimed to enhance the employee-driven innovation practices at workplace level in a public organisation. Although front-line employees are increasingly encouraged to participate in innovation, organisations lack multi-level knowledge on the practices, outcomes and effects of participation.

A six-month development process (LEDI) was conducted to empower front-line hospital support service workers to learn to innovate and to apply this in the services they provide. The process consisted of different themes: future visions, current services, creating new services and evaluations of ideas and innovation embryos. The multi-method evaluation of the process included pre-evaluation of the generated innovation ideas, a developmental evaluation of the selected innovation embryos, a follow-up evaluation of the innovation ideas and an evaluation of the organisational level effect via a quantitative survey.

The intervention process had positive effects on employee participation and learning to innovate. The conclusion of the four evaluations is that the LEDI process developed a new kind of agency among employees and enabled significant improvements to services. The evaluation of the organisation-level effect revealed that the process had also improved the views regarding preconditions for development.

The intervention method is a practical application of employee-driven innovation conception that is validated as practical and effective at workplace level. The process is a viable method for enhancing workers’ innovation-related learning in service organisations. The novelty of the method is based on the multi-disciplinary combination of approaches that consist of theories of practice-based innovation, expansive learning and emphatic human-centred service design.

In Saudi Arabia, technical education is managed by Technical and Vocational Training Corporation. However, there is no independent accrediting body to accredit the technical institutes and assure its quality, which causes the lack of unified quality assurance standards and manageable quality improvement processes. The purpose of this paper is to propose self-evaluation standards to help the technical institutes to evaluate their performance.

The author has used a brainstorming technique of local practitioners in quality assurance. Such technique was performed by adopting DACUM that stands for “Developing A CurriculUM”. The author has used a heuristic educational and training process as the foundation of the standards and processes development, namely; curriculum, environment, training managements, and instructors. A team has been established that has been trained locally and abroad on the quality assurance standards and processes. The team studied several quality frameworks of the different countries to come up with guidelines for quality self-evaluation and standards.

The author has found that such an approach is a very effective tool for improving the institutes' performance and gives them the flexibility to decide about their missions. Most of institutes' staff is reluctant to participate in the self-evaluation process because of the fear it may reveal their weaknesses, but with encouragement and motivation especially from the top management they tend to participate in such a process. Self-evaluation helps the educational institutes to be benchmarked with other international institutions, in which good practices may be adopted by the institutes' managements to achieve their vision.

The proposed approach can help the technical education institutes to manage their quality system. In addition, the implementation of such an approach might be the starting point to develop a quality system framework for the technical education in Saudi Arabia. However, further investigation is needed to measure whether applying such standards may help the technical education institutes to meet the required quality standards to attain an accreditation from the international quality agencies.

The proposed guidelines for quality standards and processes is a contribution in the accreditation and quality assurance processes for many public and private institutions in Saudi Arabia. In addition, it is an important step to standardize the quality processes.

For social marketers to become effective change agents, evaluation is important. This paper aims to expand existing evaluation work to empirically respond to Gordon and Gurrieri’s request for a reflexive turn in social marketing using reflexive process evaluations: measuring more than “what” worked well, but also evaluating “how” and “why” success or indeed failure happened.

An online survey, adapting Dillman’s tailored design method empirically assesses 13 reflexive process hypotheses. With a response rate of 74 per cent, regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the proposed hypotheses and to identify the significant predictors of each of the reflexive process relationships under investigation.

The study empirically examines and shows support for three reflexive process evaluation constructs – relationships, knowledge and networking. Network involvement and reciprocity; two process dimension constructs do not exert any impact or predict any relationship in the conceptual framework.

This paper expands evaluation theory and practice by offering a conceptual framework for reflexive process evaluation that supports the logic to be reflexive. It shows support for three reflective process evaluation constructs – relationships, knowledge and networks. Another unique element featured in this study is the empirical assessment of Gordon and Gurrieri’s “other stakeholders”, extending evaluations beyond a traditional client focus to an interconnected assessment of researchers, clients and other stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test an integrated conceptual framework using construal level theory (CLT) to explain the differences in the effects of process and outcome service attributes on overall service evaluation and customer satisfaction based on consumption context (social), evaluation context (temporal) and individual characteristics (expertise).

The authors use two lab experiments (hotel and restaurant settings) and a field study of online reviews posted by actual hotel customers to test all the hypotheses.

Process (outcome) attributes have a stronger influence on service evaluations under low-level (high-level) construal. Specifically, process attributes have a stronger influence when customers are accompanied by proximal (vs distal) social group, evaluate a service under near (vs distant) temporal frame or have high (vs low) level of customer expertise.

Service managers can use the findings about the differences in the influence of social, temporal and individual variables on customer evaluations under process and outcome attributes to improve customers’ service experiences and satisfaction.

This paper extends past research on the influence of construal levels on customer decision making by exploring the differences in the effects of process vs outcome service attributes on overall service evaluation and customer satisfaction, under the influence of low (vs high) construal levels triggered by social, temporal and individual variables.