Assessing the results of public expenditure: program evaluation in the Canadian federal government

Abstract. In an attempt to tighten up its financial systems and improve control of expenditures, the Canadian federal government has set up a new office, that of the Comptroller General. One of this Office's responsibilities is to administer the Treasury Board's policy on program evaluation, which says that all government programs should be periodically reviewed for their effectiveness in meeting goals and for the efficiency with which they are managed. The paper describes the Office's approach to program evaluation, reviews program evaluation policy in three other countries and discusses the principles and practical problems which limit the application of evaluation research. Evaluation activity in Canada is endangered in its cradle by two threats: the tendency of proponents to over-exuberance; and the cynics' view that the activity is of such limited applicability that potential savings are negligible. A third problem is a tendency to fuse together policy-related and management-related assessment activity. Evaluation activity conducted from the operational management point of view which takes program goals for granted will surely result in sequences of small victories and economies. This is worth doing well. But the dramatic import of effectiveness evaluation as a ‘bottom line’ for judging the worth of whole programs — that is, as a policy tool — should not be allowed to generate false expectations about the scope for improvement in routine management of the public service. Sommaire. En vue de fortifier ses systèmes financiers et d'améliorer le contrôle exercé sur ses dépenses, le gouvemement fédéral canadien a créé un nouveau poste, celui du Contrôleur général. Une des responsabilités de cette function est d'administrer la politique du Conseil du trésor en matière d'évaluation de programmes. Cette politique exige que les programmes gouvernementaux soient évalués périodiquement afin de déterminer leur efficacitéà rencontrer leurs objectifs ainsi que la capacité de rendement de leur gestion. Ce document décrit l'approche du Bureau du Contrôleur général en matière d'évaluation de programmes; examine les politiques correspondantes dans trois autres pays; et discute des principes et des problèmes pratiques qui limitent l'applicabilité de l'évaluation en recherche.     

School Belonging,Self-Esteem,and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents: An Examination of Sex,Sexual Attraction Status,and Urbanicity

Using data from Wave II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health; Bearman, P. S., Jones, J., and Udry, J. R. http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/design.html, 1997), we conducted multivariate analyses to examine three indicators of psychosocial adjustment (school belonging, self-esteem, depressive symptoms) and their associations with sexual attraction status, sex, and urbanicity. In general, sexual minority adolescents reported lower psychological adjustment than adolescents endorsing other-sex attractions only, with sexual minority females at particular risk. Further, differential patterns of risk for sexual minority youth emerged across rural, urban, and suburban communities. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings for addressing the psychosocial needs of sexual minority adolescents.     

Motivations for Social Media Use: Associations with Social Media Engagement and Body Satisfaction and Well-Being among Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescents are spending considerable time on social media, yet it is unclear whether motivations for social media use drive different forms of social media...     

Empirical Evaluation of the Reliability of Photogrammetry Software in the Recovery of Three-Dimensional Footwear Impressions

This paper examines the reliability of Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry as a tool in the capture of forensic footwear marks. This is applicable to photogrammetry freeware DigTrace but is equally relevant to other SfM solutions. SfM simply requires a digital camera, a scale bar, and a selection of oblique photographs of the trace in question taken at the scene. The output is a digital three-dimensional point cloud of the surface and any plastic trace thereon. The first section of this paper examines the reliability of photogrammetry to capture the same data when repeatedly used on one impression, while the second part assesses the impact of varying cameras. Using cloud to cloud comparisons that measure the distance between two-point clouds, we assess the variability between models. The results highlight how little variability is evident and therefore speak to the accuracy and consistency of such techniques in the capture of three-dimensional traces. Using this method, 3D footwear impressions can, in many substrates, be collected with a repeatability of 97% with any variation between models less than ~0.5 mm.     

The promises and pitfalls of polysemic ideas: ‘One Health’ and antimicrobial resistance policy in Australia and the UK

Policy Sciences - Recent scholarship posits that ambiguous (‘polysemic’) ideas are effective for coalition building between diverse stakeholders: their capacity to be interpreted...