Insights From an Evaluability Assessment of the U.S. Forest Service More Kids in the Woods Initiative

Abstract

We conducted an evaluability assessment of the U.S. Forest Service's “More Kids in the Woods” internal grant initiative based on a review of 26 funded proposals, the creation of logic models, and a survey of project leaders. Evaluations of the initative are warranted because it has clear outcome objectives, is implemented as intended, and results suggest plausible benefits associated with providing underserved youth with outdoor experiences. Findings also point to the types of evaluations that will be useful and add to the limited literature on environmental grant programs as well as environmental educators’ evaluation interests, practices and perceived competencies.

Keywords:

• evaluability assessment
• evaluation
• evaluation competency
• grant program
• pre-evaluation
• outdoor education

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This evaluation was conducted through a cooperative agreement with the Forest Service's Conservation Education Program and Research and Development with valuable insights and support provided by Dr. Safiya Samman, Drew Burnett, and Dr. Barbara McDonald. We are also grateful to the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources & Environment graduate students Brian Barch and Lori Kumler for their assistance with data collection.

Notes

1. Literature reviews of published environmental education evaluations by Carleton-Hug & Hug (2010) and by Zint (2012) did not reveal any published evaluability assessments of environmental education programs. Because these reviews focused on published studies, it is possible that unpublished evaluability assessments of environmental education programs have been conducted.

2. The authors would have liked to also obtain corroborating information from FS project leaders’ partners, used interviews and focus groups, as well as conducted site visits, but these methods were not possible due to financial constraints.

3. When percents add to more than 100, it is because study participants could select more than one response.

4. www.meera.snre.umich.edu

5. EUGENE provides environmental educators with an evaluation system for assessing changes in participants’ knowledge of ecology. The system allows environmental educators to generate a pre-post-test with valid and reliable measures for assessing different ecological concepts, to subsequently enter data collected from participants, and obtain an analysis of results. Once completed, EUGENE will be accessible through MEERA (see above Web site).