Reference no: EM133333167

The final project is designed to mimic a real-world scenario in which your team competes to win an evaluation contract with a direct service provider. In essence my team is striving to convey to the service provider that we have a strong understanding of the research and theory of change that underly their intervention, along with a robust strategy for capturing both process and impact outcomes that will enable my team to demonstrate the real impact of the intervention on participants. Keep in mind, the service provider already believes their program works - your task is to structure an evaluation design that will convince other stakeholders that this program is worth their investment. That is what you are "pitching" to the service provider.

Students will work in teams to cull the existing evidence behind one of two well-known cognitive interventions, design a logic model to frame how these take form in real-world programs, and construct an evaluation plan to capture and analyze key outcomes and demonstrate their impact(s) on several cohorts of clients.

Rikers Rovers is an Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) intervention on Rikers Island in which select "houses" on Rikers are assigned a shelter dog to foster, train, and care for. At the end of the program, the participants select a home in the community to adopt the dog. It is important to note that AAT is a form of SEL, so the impacts expected from the program are similar to those of the Recharge project.

Question:

Discuss the operationalization of some of the process and outcome variables of your team's project. Why is operationalization important?