This was a practical guide to program evaluation that also included a valuable overview of the associated history and theory. If I were to read it again, I think it would be more useful to start with Part 3 and 4 and then read 1 and 2.
UGGGH, kill me now. So much bullshit padding. Like, literally using "the dictionary defines X as..." to needlessly fill space. Just used the word evaluation 4 times in one sentence. Exhaustively lists synonyms of the word evaluate. For 500 pages and $100+.
As others have said, there’s some great information here, and it can serve as a good reference text when conducting program evaluations, but it’s wrapped in an extremely padded, repetitious package that makes it a chore to pull out the most useful information.
This text was the course text for a program evaluation graduate level course. A few reading assignments into the course, I found it more beneficial to skip the reading and use the index to locate the relevant portions of the text.
This textbook would have been more tolerable if it was less conversational and more concise. I had this cute little old professor in college that was brilliant but lecturing was not one of his strong suits. He would ramble on and go off on tangents and before long I would have no idea how what he was saying was related to the discussion topic. Reading this text was much like sitting in one that professor's lectures.
I gave the text a three only because I did learn a great deal from the course and this text was the primary resource that I used. Organize and get rid of all the superfluous and extraneous conversations.