Tools for Formative Evaluation: Gathering the Information Necessary for Program Improvement

New Extension educators experience a steep learning curve when attempting to develop effective Extension programs. Formative evaluation is helpful to new, and experienced, Extension educators in determining the changes necessary for making programs more effective. Formative evaluation is an essential part of program evaluation. However, its use has been overlooked by Extension educators due to overemphasis on outcomes evaluation for accountability. Extension educators must develop evaluation tools with questions appropriate for determining program weaknesses and strengths and identifying changes necessary for improvement. This article describes how to develop formative evaluation questions for program improvement

Making Evaluation Work for You: Ideas for Deriving Multiple Benefits from Evaluation

Increased demand for accountability has forced Extension educators to evaluate their programs and document program impacts. Due to this situation, some Extension educators may view evaluation simply as the task, imposed on them by administrators, of collecting outcome and impact data for accountability. They do not perceive evaluation as a useful tool in Extension programming and, therefore, pay little or no attention to it. The purpose of this article is to describe how to integrate evaluation into Extension programming to gain all the benefits evaluation offers. These benefits include program improvement, monitoring, and marketing and Extension advocacy

Community engagement in preparing for natural water disasters of different time and magnitude scales – A comparative study between Japan and England

This exploratory research funded by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation considers two chal-lenges recognised in the DRR community in recent years. One is the necessity of ‘all of society engagement’ emphasised in the Sendai Framework for DRR 2015-2030, which has led to the rein-forcement of community-based DRR. The other is, as the Red Cross World Disasters Report 2014 criticises, experts ‘persist’ in prioritising high-impact/low-frequency hazards. Inquiries into communi-ties’ DRR against hazards of different return periods and magnitudes have been scarce. The re-search focuses on natural water disasters, such as floods and typhoons generated due to atmos-pheric forcing factors, which have been intensified by climate change, as well as tsunamis. Both Japan and England have had a series of impacts of them in recent years. Applying a comparative approach, the research discusses four cases of under-researched water disaster-prone communities in Oita and Wakayama Prefectures, and the Essex and Devon Counties. The two research questions probed are: 1) to what extent the perceptions between DRR experts and community members differ in relation to disasters with different return periods and magnitudes; 2) what are the implications of the perception gap on the actualisation of ‘community-based’ and ‘participatory’ DRR. The interdis-ciplinary research team combines the observation of major structural mitigation solutions (e.g. barrier walls, embankments and evacuation shelters etc.) against water disasters of different scales in the four cases, and the analysis of non-structural measures through stakeholder interviews – policy-makers, academics, activists, community members – undertaken in the four communities. One of the key findings of the research is that both DRR experts and community members approach high-im-pact/low-frequency hazards with ‘prevention’ and ‘reduction’ measures, while for low-impact/high-frequency hazards, the countermeasures become ‘adaptation’. This has led us to consider develop-ing a new framework in categorising water disasters, applying a new index – the number of people ‘affected’ – in addition to scale and magnitudes. The novelty of the framework is to include community perspective so as to enable a community-based bottom-up approach in decision-making of DRR measures

4-H International Visitor Exchange Programming Barriers, Challenges, and Alternatives

The purpose of the Delphi study described in this article was to determine barriers, challenges, and alternatives related to planning and implementing 4-H international visitor exchange programs. The Delphi panel comprised 21 Extension agents selected from two southeastern states on the basis of their experience and/or interest in international visitor exchange programming. The Delphi panel identified seven barriers and 16 challenges related to planning and implementing 4-H international visitor exchange programs and 25 alternatives useful for overcoming those barriers and challenges. The study led to practical recommendations for educating agents for the task, recruiting and training host families, and preparing outbound youths

Impact Evaluation of Integrated Extension Programs: Lessons Learned from the Community Gardening Program

Integrated programming is a coordinated Extension approach to address multi-faceted community issues. An integrated Extension approach is needed to address complex community issues in a meaningful way. Planning, implementation, and evaluation of an integrated program should be considered as a joint effort by the partnering Extension agents. This article describes how to document the impacts of integrated Extension program to reflect the coordinated effort of the Extension team. Documentation as well as sharing impacts with the partners is necessary to strengthen the collaboration and sustain the integrated Extension programming effort

“The great source” microplastic abundance and characteristics along the river Thames

This study focused on quantifying the abundance of microplastics within the surface water of the River Thames, UK. Ten sites in eight areas were sampled within the tidal Thames, starting from Teddington and ending at Southend-on-Sea. Three litres of water was collected monthly at high tide from land-based structures from each site from May 2019 to May 2021. Samples underwent visual analysis for microplastics categorised based on type, colour and size. 1041 pieces were tested using Fourier transform spectroscopy to identify chemical composition and polymer type. 6401 pieces of MP were found during sampling with an average MP of 12.27 pieces L⁻¹ along the river Thames. Results from this study show that microplastic abundance does not increase along the river

Proposing Thematic Mapping for Integrated Risk Communication: A study of British & Japanese perspectives in flood-prone communities

Modern flood risk communication continues to lack the input of different stakeholder levels and as a result, there has been an insufficiency to construct communication that is inclusive of all stakeholders. There is also still an absence of consideration of context-specific information that helps to shape the communication crafting process. This study sought to establish the above through the creation of a thematic map (a visual display based on themes), merging top-down and bottom-up approaches to create a clearer picture of important factors for risk communication within the specific contexts being observed. The research team conducted 16 semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 4 different types of stakeholders at 2 rural sites in the UK and 2 rural sites in Japan. The results outlined five key themes that underpin integrated risk communication, establishing the thematic map – Individual Circumstances, Community Structure, Impact Scale, Response Capacity, and Social Barriers. These findings are important in beginning to help conceptualise how current DRR efforts can be enhanced and in presenting an integrated approach to risk communication that helps to reduce unnecessary complexity and inaccessibility. However, further replications of the study are needed at other sites across the world to test the robustness and adaptability of this kind of modelling

Normative Findings for Periocular Anthropometric Measurements among Chinese Young Adults in Hong Kong

Measurement of periocular structures is of value in several clinical specialties including ophthalmology, optometry, medical and clinical genetics, oculoplastic surgery, and traumatology. Therefore we aimed to determine the periocular anthropometric norms for Chinese young adults using a noninvasive 3D stereophotography system. Craniofacial images using the 3dMDface system were acquired for 103 Chinese subjects (51 males and 52 females) between the ages of 18 and 35 years. Anthropometric landmarks were identified on these digital images according to standard definitions, and linear distances between these landmarks were calculated. It was found that ocular measurements were significantly larger in Chinese males than females for intercanthal width, biocular width, and eye fissure lengths. No gender differences were found in the eye fissure height and the canthal index which ranged between 43 and 44. Both right and left eye fissure height-length ratios were significantly larger in females. This is the first study to employ 3D stereophotogrammetry to create a database of anthropometric normative data for periocular measurements. These data would be useful for clinical interpretation of periocular pathology and serve as reference values when planning aesthetic and posttraumatic surgical interventions