Confirmative Evaluation

Your Guide to Confirmative Evaluation

At a time when no expenditure is going unquestioned in organizations, training professionals are under increased pressure to prove the continuing efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and value of training programs as well as the continuing competence of the learners.

This much-needed book offers trainers, consultants, evaluation professionals, and human resource executives and practitioners a hands-on resource for understanding and applying the proven principles of confirmative evaluation. Confirmative evaluation is a marriage of evaluation and continuous improvement. Unlike other types of evaluation-which are used during the design of a learning program or applied immediately after conducting a program-confirmative evaluation follows several months after the program is implemented. It tests the endurance of outcomes, the return on investment, and establishes the effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and value of the training over time.

Throughout Confirmative Evaluation the authors show how to:

• Develop a complete, accurate, and useful confirmative evaluation plan
• Assess the evaluability of the training process
• Use a flowchart, a rating form, and other performance support techniques and tools to support confirmative evaluation
• Employ hard and soft technologies to conduct an efficient and effective confirmative evaluation
• Seamlessly add confirmative evaluation to your repertoire of knowledge and skills
• Interpret the data and communicate the results

This book provides an on-the-job guide for planning and conducting confirmative evaluation of training programs and is filled with useful tables, figures, performance support tools, references, a glossary, and a thorough case study.