Читать книгу Evaluation in Today’s World - Veronica G. Thomas - Страница 161

Laura Leviton is the coauthor of Foundations of Program Evaluation (Shadish, Cook, & Leviton, 1991). This was one of the first comprehensive assessments of evaluation theories providing both insightful analysis of the current state of evaluation theory and suggestions for improving evaluation practice. From 1999 to 2017, Leviton served as special advisor for evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, an organization that seeks to improve the health and health care of all Americans. This position was created for Leviton at the foundation to advise and consult on evaluations across its many initiatives and national programs. In this position, Leviton describes her role as striving to represent the quality and consistency of the foundation’s research and evaluation and its impact on health and health care nationwide. During her time at the foundation, since 1999, Leviton has overseen more than 80 national and local evaluations. She is interested in all aspects of evaluation methodology and practice. Leviton has been recognized as a leader in the field of evaluating community health promotions (Francisco, Butterfoss, & Capwell, 2001). She collaborated on the first randomized experiment on HIV prevention, and later on two large place-based randomized controlled experiments on improving medical practices.

In an interview conducted by Francisco et al. (2001), Leviton provided an interesting (and still timely) insight that about evaluation:

Regarding evaluation, I learned how incredibly important it is to take culture into account. When I was in Pennsylvania, we had a project in the central mountain region of the state, and we all thought we understood their Appalachian culture. We found out quickly that we were quite wrong. One should never assume that one knows enough about this. Go into the situation with an open mind and learn what you can from the community. Secondly, I also learned how important it is to remain flexible about evaluation methods. We really need to have the questions drive the methods we use, and not vice versa. (p. 204)

Leviton was president of the AEA in the year 2000. She has been a scholar on evaluation methods and practice, particularly in the area of disease prevention, publishing over 100 articles and books and providing oversight on more than 100 evaluations.