Description
For this paper you will work as part of a team or individually to carry out an evaluation of a human service organization. There are two options to choose from:
Option 1. You can choose your current or former field placement or place of employment to conduct the evaluation. Speak with your supervisor regarding an appropriate, feasible evaluation of interest to the agency. Ask what data might be available for you to use. Appropriate data include data regularly collected by the agency, or data that you collect yourself. The data should not be aggregated, such as in a year-end report or annual report, but should be in a format that can be analyzed using Sofastats, SPSS, or some other statistical program.
Option 2. You may use a hypothetical human agency, Human Services of Southern New Jersey, for the evaluation. There is a website you may access containing information about two programs, the Girls Support Group and Substance Abuse Services. There is also data that you may use for analysis. The website is: http://humanservicesnj.weebly.com/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Once there, you will be on the home page. Then click on Family Support. That page will give you a brief description of the Girls Support Group program. For more information, click on Girls Support Group Reports. Any information you do not find there you can create for purposes of this paper.
To access the Substance Abuse Services, click on Substance Abuse Services. That page will give you a brief description of the services available for adolescents and adults. Click on the Outpatient Adult Substance Abuse Treatment, then Reports. You will find data that you can use for a paper.
Your report should no more than 10–14 pages long (APA style), not including charts. You should have 5–8 references, one of which should be Royse et al. Your paper should be submitted to the Dropbox and include a statement identifying the contribution of each group member to the writing of the paper. Only one member of the team needs to submit the paper.
For this evaluation report you are to use subheadings covering all the sections below:
Executive Summary (less than 1 page)
Background of the Program and Statement of the Evaluation Goals (1 page)
Describe the program, including its goals and objectives.
List the goals of your evaluation.
Brief Literature Review (2–3 pages): What is known already about evaluating this type of program?
Methodology (1–2 pages): How did you evaluate your program?
Evaluation design
Sample
Data collection techniques
Data collection instruments
Data analysis
Outcome measures
Limitations of the study
Results (1–2 pages
Using descriptive statistics, describe the demographic characteristics of your sample, e.g., age, race, sex, and so forth.
Using at least one or more statistical tests you think appropriate, describe the results of your data analysis to answer your evaluation question(s).
Discussion of Results (2–3 pages)
What do these findings mean? What could account for these findings other than the intervention?
How do the limitations of the study (the design, instrument, sample, reliability, validity) influence findings?
Conclusions and Recommendations (2–4 pages)
Conclusions: Based on your findings, what can you say about the program meeting its goals and objectives?
Recommendations regarding the program: Based on your findings, what does the program need to do?
Recommendations regarding subsequent evaluation of the program: What recommendations would you make to other researchers interested in evaluating this type of program? Be specific.
The grading rubric for the paper can be found in Course Essentials – Rubrics.
Video Instructions
The video below provides additional instructions, guidance, and tips for your Program-Level Evaluation Project.
Sample Solution
Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell.
In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.
God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.
Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.
To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.
References
Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.
Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.
Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.
