J Bradley Cousins
Biographic Data
| ID | 5854470 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Bradley Cousins |
| GIVEN NAMES | J Bradley |
| FAMILY NAME | Cousins |
| SIGNATURE | COUSINS J B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Ottawa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0684-6766 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Unraveling the complexities of learning in community development evaluation
In this article, we critically explore the pedagogical implications of evaluation in the community development sector, with a focus on opportunities for enhancing learning through evaluation in community contexts. We begin by situating learning as foundational to evaluation, whether individually or in collaboration with others, and through reflection, dialogue, critical thinking, or practice. We then shift to a discussion of community development…
Theory-Practice Connections in Collaborative Approaches to Evaluation
Collaborative approaches to evaluation (CAE) are evaluations where evaluators engage with program community members to coproduce evaluation knowledge. There has been much written about CAE theory and a plethora of empirical studies have been published. Yet little is known about the extent to which CAE practice corresponds with theory. This study is a systematic review of a set of 46 peer-reviewed studies of CAE practice published over the past 25…
Using Dedoose to “Quantitize” Qualitative Data in Mixed Method Analysis
This practice note provides a review of Dedoose®, a software analysis platform capable of mixed methods analysis, based on a case application. The software has been used infrequently by the evaluation community but has significant potential, particularly for those interested in “quantizing” qualitative data. The evaluation of the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists’ Fellowship Program is briefly described, followed by a descriptio…
Examining the Process and Effects of Engaging Patients and Family in Health Service Evaluation
Research on program evaluation in the context of patient and family engagement is highly limited. Collaborative approaches to evaluation (CAE), with their emphasis on evaluators working in partnership with program community members, align well with patient- and family-centred care philosophy and hold great promise in leveraging desired outcomes. In this prospective intervention case study, we tracked a one-year collaborative initiative to engage …
Developing an ethical rationale for collaborative approaches to evaluation
As a deeply relational, dialogic, engaged and political approach, the collaborative research context is fairly unique in the world of research, and as such opens up an entirely new set of ethical considerations that serve to differentiate it from other approaches, repositioning ethics as a fundamental rationale for collaborative inquiry. In this paper, we revisit the justifications for collaborative approaches to evaluation—the three Ps—which hav…
Understanding Evaluation Policy and Organizational Capacity for Evaluation
Evaluation policy has been identified as an important means of shaping and influencing organizational evaluation practice, yet, to date, little empirical research has been conducted to deepen our understanding of this relationship. The purpose of this study was to illuminate evaluation policy’s role in leveraging organizational capacity to do and use evaluation. We interviewed 18 published evaluation scholars and practitioners from North America …
The evaluation of social innovation
Social innovation has gained prominence as a way to address social problems and needs. Evaluators and social innovators are conceptualizing and implementing evaluation approaches for social innovation contexts; however, no systematic effort has yet been made to explore and assess the overlap between evaluation and social innovation based on the empirical knowledge base. We address this gap, drawing on 28 empirical studies of evaluation in social …
Making Space for Adaptive Learning
This article reports findings from a research program exploring the role of mediation in an “adaptive learning” process through study of developmental evaluation (DE). Our study focuses on how mediators might influence the relationships between components of a social learning system and the implications for adaptive learning. Specifically, we focused on evaluators making space for the interrogation of ideas and choices, why this is important, wha…
Evaluating Social Innovations
Social innovations (SIs) frequently bring previously unrelated actors, ideas, and practices together in new configurations with the goal of addressing social needs. However, the dizzying variety of definitions of SI and their dynamic, exploratory character raise dilemmas for evaluators tasked with their evaluations. This article is based on a systematic review of research on evaluation, specifically an analysis of 28 published peer-reviewed empir…
Advancing Patient Engagement in Health Service Improvement
Despite efforts for greater patient engagement in health care quality improvement, evaluation practice in this context remains mostly conventional and noncollaborative. Following an explication of this problem we discuss relevant theory and research on patient-centred care (PCC) and patient engagement and then consider potential benefits of collaborative and participatory approaches to evaluation of such initiatives. We argue that collaborative a…
Reflections on the Meaning of Success in Collaborative Approaches to Evaluation
How do evaluators using collaborative approaches to evaluation (CAE) define success? This is the core question being asked in a further analysis of data from our previous work (Cousins, Whitmore, & Shulha, 2013; Shulha et al., 2016) that developed a set of evidence-based principles to guide collaborative evaluation practice. Probing data from 320 responses to our (2012) survey, we examined what respondents considered “highly successful” and “less…
A Cross-cultural Evaluation Conversation in India
Through a guided discussion, this article explores a five-year cross-cultural evaluation relationship comprising multiple projects involving an evaluator from Canada and a group of Indian colleagues working on educational reform in India. The initiative was funded through a multilateral consortium of donors and involved Western evaluation specialists working in collaboration with Indian colleagues to (a) develop evaluation capacity within the cou…
Meeting at the Crossroads
This article is a review and integration of evaluation utilization literature with a new focus on the use of technology to increase evaluation utility. Scholarship on evaluation utilization embodies one of the major and ongoing quandaries in the evaluation profession: What constitutes usefulness and relevance to stakeholders? We think that a constructivist lens is helpful in making sense of the trajectory this literature has taken, where what is …
Introducing Evidence-Based Principles to Guide Collaborative Approaches to Evaluation
This article introduces a set of evidence-based principles to guide evaluation practice in contexts where evaluation knowledge is collaboratively produced by evaluators and stakeholders. The data from this study evolved in four phases: two pilot phases exploring the desirability of developing a set of principles; an online questionnaire survey that drew on the expertise of 320 practicing evaluators to identify dimensions, factors or characteristi…
Let There Be Light
Understanding Dimensions of Organizational Evaluation Capacity
Organizational evaluation capacity building has been a topic of increasing interest in recent years. However, the actual dimensions of evaluation capacity have not been clearly articulated through empirical research. This study sought to address this gap by identifying the key dimensions of evaluation capacity in Canadian federal government organizations. The methodology used, based on Leithwood and Montgomery’s Innovation Profile approach, featu…
Arguments for a Common Set of Principles for Collaborative Inquiry in Evaluation
In this article, we critique two recent theoretical developments about collaborative inquiry in evaluation—using logic models as a means to understand theory, and efforts to compartmentalize versions of collaborative inquiry into discrete genres—as a basis for considering future direction for the field. We argue that collaborative inquiry in evaluation is about relationships between trained evaluation specialists and nonevaluator stakeholders (i.…
Program Evaluation in Family-Centred Pediatric Rehabilitation Settings
Many health care professionals in pediatric rehabilitation settings are under pressure to evaluate programs that adhere to the philosophy of family-centred service (FCS). Although there is rhetoric about the importance of upholding this philosophy in program evaluation, the literature reveals that evaluation practices within these settings are often incongruent. This article provides a brief overview of the current evaluation approaches and metho…
Organizational Capacity To Do and Use Evaluation
Despite increasing interest in the integration of evaluative inquiry into organizational functions and culture, the availability of empirical research addressing organizational capacity building to do and use evaluation is limited. This exploratory descriptive survey of internal evaluators in Canada asked about evaluation capacity building in the context of organizational characteristics (learning, support structures), evaluative activity and use…
Informing Evaluation Capacity Building Through Profiling Organizational Capacity for Evaluation
According to the literature published on the topic, the development of an organization’s capacity to do and use evaluation typically follows four stages: traditional evaluation, characterized by externally mandated evaluation activities; awareness and experimentation, during which organizational members learn about evaluation and its benefits by participating in a number of evaluation-related activities; evaluation implementation, the stage at wh…
Understanding Organization Capacity for Evaluation
The special issue is devoted to the examination of organizational capacity for evaluation and evaluation capacity building (ECB) through empirical inquiry. The compilation consists of two quantitative surveys of evaluators and seven single or multiple case studies across a broad array of organizations in a diverse contexts (e.g., east-central Ontario, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Israel). In this final article, the authors look across the c…
A Review and Synthesis of Current Research on Cross-Cultural Evaluation
As a fairly new and emergent construct, there remain many gaps in our knowledge about how to integrate notions of culture and cultural context into evaluation theory and practice, as well as gaps in our knowledge about how to conduct and implement evaluations in immigrant and indigenous communities. In this article, the authors provide a comprehensive review of the empirical literature on evaluations conducted in cultural communities, with an emp…
Engaging stakeholders in the planning of a collaborative multi-agency evaluation
Reconnecting Knowledge Utilization and Evaluation Utilization Domains of Inquiry
This article provides commentary for the thematic segment titled “Applying a variety of methods to the evaluation of various efforts aimed at transferring knowledge generated from research.” The authors revisit arguments supporting inquiry that takes up the challenge of connecting cognate fields of evaluation utilization and the broader domain of knowledge utilization. The central contribution of each of the foregoing articles is identified and s…
Antibullying Programs
Within-teacher predictors of teacher efficacy
Understanding Dimensions of Organizational Evaluation Capacity
Organizational evaluation capacity building has been a topic of increasing interest in recent years. However, the actual dimensions of evaluation capacity have not been clearly articulated through empirical research. This study sought to address this gap by identifying the key dimensions of evaluation capacity in Canadian federal government organizations. The methodology used, based on Leithwood and Montgomery’s Innovation Profile approach, featu…
Introducing Evidence-Based Principles to Guide Collaborative Approaches to Evaluation
This article introduces a set of evidence-based principles to guide evaluation practice in contexts where evaluation knowledge is collaboratively produced by evaluators and stakeholders. The data from this study evolved in four phases: two pilot phases exploring the desirability of developing a set of principles; an online questionnaire survey that drew on the expertise of 320 practicing evaluators to identify dimensions, factors or characteristi…
Arguments for a Common Set of Principles for Collaborative Inquiry in Evaluation
In this article, we critique two recent theoretical developments about collaborative inquiry in evaluation—using logic models as a means to understand theory, and efforts to compartmentalize versions of collaborative inquiry into discrete genres—as a basis for considering future direction for the field. We argue that collaborative inquiry in evaluation is about relationships between trained evaluation specialists and nonevaluator stakeholders (i.…
Understanding Evaluation Policy and Organizational Capacity for Evaluation
Evaluation policy has been identified as an important means of shaping and influencing organizational evaluation practice, yet, to date, little empirical research has been conducted to deepen our understanding of this relationship. The purpose of this study was to illuminate evaluation policy’s role in leveraging organizational capacity to do and use evaluation. We interviewed 18 published evaluation scholars and practitioners from North America …
Evaluating Social Innovations
Social innovations (SIs) frequently bring previously unrelated actors, ideas, and practices together in new configurations with the goal of addressing social needs. However, the dizzying variety of definitions of SI and their dynamic, exploratory character raise dilemmas for evaluators tasked with their evaluations. This article is based on a systematic review of research on evaluation, specifically an analysis of 28 published peer-reviewed empir…
Enhancing Knowledge Utilization as a Strategy for School Improvement
The inability of either bottom-up or top-down strategies, by themselves, to provide suitable conditions for school improvement warrants a shift to school-focused knowledge use as a way to encourage such improvement. This study examines the influence of a large array of factors, derived from a knowledge utilization framework, on educators' use of several types of information for improvement purposes. Two hundred and thirty-three elementary school …
When the Boat Gets Missed
Making Space for Adaptive Learning
This article reports findings from a research program exploring the role of mediation in an “adaptive learning” process through study of developmental evaluation (DE). Our study focuses on how mediators might influence the relationships between components of a social learning system and the implications for adaptive learning. Specifically, we focused on evaluators making space for the interrogation of ideas and choices, why this is important, wha…
When the boat gets missed
Program Evaluation in Family-Centred Pediatric Rehabilitation Settings
Many health care professionals in pediatric rehabilitation settings are under pressure to evaluate programs that adhere to the philosophy of family-centred service (FCS). Although there is rhetoric about the importance of upholding this philosophy in program evaluation, the literature reveals that evaluation practices within these settings are often incongruent. This article provides a brief overview of the current evaluation approaches and metho…
Commentary
Subjective Correlation and the Regular-Random Numerosity Illusion
It has been shown previously that a regular pattern of dots appears more numerous than a random pattern with the same physical number. Birnbaum and Veit's theory of contrast with expectancy has been suggested as a possible interpretation of this illusion. In order to test this theory, three groups (N = 102) were given prior exposure to stimuli with either a positive, negative, or zero correlation between regularity and number. The predicted inter…
Subjective Correlation and the Regular-Random Numerosity Illusion
It has been shown previously that a regular pattern of dots appears more numerous than a random pattern with the same physical number. Birnbaum and Veit's theory of contrast with expectancy has been suggested as a possible interpretation of this illusion. In order to test this theory, three groups (N = 102) were given prior exposure to stimuli with either a positive, negative, or zero correlation between regularity and number. The predicted inter…
Current Empirical Research on Evaluation Utilization
This paper reviews empirical research conducted during the past 15 years on the use of evaluation results. Sixty-five studies in education, mental health, and social services are described in terms of their methodological characteristics, their orientation toward dependent and independent variables, and the relationships between such variables. A conceptual framework is developed that lists 12 factors that influence use; six of these factors are …
The Case for Participatory Evaluation
Participatory evaluation is presented as an extension of the stakeholder-based model with a focus on enhancing evaluation utilization through primary users’ increased depth and range of participation in the applied research process. The approach is briefly described and then justified from theoretical and empirical bases. The literature on organizational learning provides theoretical support for participatory evaluation stemming primarily from th…
Enhancing Knowledge Utilization as a Strategy for School Improvement
The inability of either bottom-up or top-down strategies, by themselves, to provide suitable conditions for school improvement warrants a shift to school-focused knowledge use as a way to encourage such improvement. This study examines the influence of a large array of factors, derived from a knowledge utilization framework, on educators' use of several types of information for improvement purposes. Two hundred and thirty-three elementary school …
Consequences of researcher involvement in participatory evaluation
Within-teacher predictors of teacher efficacy
Framing participatory evaluation
This chapter posits two principal streams of participatory evaluation, practical participatory evaluation and transformative participatory evaluation, and compares them on a set of dimensions relating to control, level, and range of participation. The authors then situate them among other forms of collaborative evaluations.
When the boat gets missed
When the Boat Gets Missed
Do Evaluator and Program Practitioner Perspectives Converge in Collaborative Evaluation
Interest in collaborative and participatory forms of evaluation — evaluation that involves evaluators working directly with nonevaluator program practitioners or stakeholders — has increased substantially in recent years. Yet research-based knowledge about such approaches remains limited. Moreover, empirical studies have focused almost exclusively on the perspectives of evaluators or, to a lesser extent, non-evaluator stakeholders associated with…
Predictors of Educator’s Valuing of Systematic Inquiry in Schools
This exploratory survey study of 310 educators was conducted to investigate what variables best predict educators’ attitudes toward systematic inquiry in schools. Eight variables were selected as potential predictors of educators’ self-reported views about applied research utility and relevance, their personal ability to do research, the need for teacher involvement in systematic inquiry, and teacher training in research methods. Significant prop…
Multiple Perspectives on Training Evaluation
Although stakeholder-based evaluation has been fairly well developed in the general program evaluation literature, it remains barely recognized in training evaluation practice. This article aims to contribute to our understanding of multiple stakeholder perceptions about training evaluation in an organizational context. Extending prior empirical work that described differences in stakeholder perceptions about valued training outcomes, the current…
Internal participatory evaluation as an organizational learning system
Commentary
Commentary
Inside the Black Box
Fidelity measurement is an evolving field in mental health case management program evaluation. This article presents an exploratory study in which two separate fidelity measures, the Dartmouth Assertive Community Treatment Scale (DACTS) and the Key Component Profiles (KCP), were used to assess structure and process elements of three mental health case management programs. The programs were studied because they all provided services to seriously m…
Editor’s Remarks
Interview with Joe Hudson, Founding Editor of CJPE
Brad Cousins] Joe, I am truly delighted with the opportunity to talk with you. I know that our readers are interested in learning about how the Journal got its start 20-plus years ago, but fi rst, could you describe your career trajectory and the development of your interests in evaluation? [Joe Hudson] Sure I grew up in New Westminster, spent some time in the British Merchant Marine, fi nally graduating from UBC, and then went to Prince Albert t…
Antibullying Programs
Special Edition / Edition Speciale Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries Editors’ Remarks
In October 2005, one of us (Cousins) had the distinct pleasure of serving as co-program chair with Michael Patton for "Crossing Borders, Crossing Boundaries," the joint meeting of the Canadian Evaluation Society and the American Evaluation Association. With 2,400 delegates, this meeting in Toronto turns out to have been the single largest evaluation conference ever held
Engaging stakeholders in the planning of a collaborative multi-agency evaluation
Reconnecting Knowledge Utilization and Evaluation Utilization Domains of Inquiry
This article provides commentary for the thematic segment titled “Applying a variety of methods to the evaluation of various efforts aimed at transferring knowledge generated from research.” The authors revisit arguments supporting inquiry that takes up the challenge of connecting cognate fields of evaluation utilization and the broader domain of knowledge utilization. The central contribution of each of the foregoing articles is identified and s…
Organizational Capacity To Do and Use Evaluation
Despite increasing interest in the integration of evaluative inquiry into organizational functions and culture, the availability of empirical research addressing organizational capacity building to do and use evaluation is limited. This exploratory descriptive survey of internal evaluators in Canada asked about evaluation capacity building in the context of organizational characteristics (learning, support structures), evaluative activity and use…
Informing Evaluation Capacity Building Through Profiling Organizational Capacity for Evaluation
According to the literature published on the topic, the development of an organization’s capacity to do and use evaluation typically follows four stages: traditional evaluation, characterized by externally mandated evaluation activities; awareness and experimentation, during which organizational members learn about evaluation and its benefits by participating in a number of evaluation-related activities; evaluation implementation, the stage at wh…
Understanding Organization Capacity for Evaluation
The special issue is devoted to the examination of organizational capacity for evaluation and evaluation capacity building (ECB) through empirical inquiry. The compilation consists of two quantitative surveys of evaluators and seven single or multiple case studies across a broad array of organizations in a diverse contexts (e.g., east-central Ontario, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Israel). In this final article, the authors look across the c…
Evaluation and Performance Assessment (35 works) · Computer Science (34 works) · Psychology (32 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Political science (23 works) · Knowledge management (21 works) · Engineering (13 works) · Health Policy Implementation Science (13 works) · Social science (13 works) · Context (archaeology (11 works)