Patterns of Program Evaluation in Community Mental Health Centers

In an exploratory study of the program evaluation efforts of federally funded community mental health centers prior to the enactment of mandatory program evaluation, survey data were submitted to factor- and cluster-analyses. Results yielded: (1) a typology of evaluation activities performed by community mental health centers (2) a meaningful patterning of (organizational) approaches to program evaluation suggesting developmental stages of an increasing range of types of activities; and (3) the tentative conclusion that, at a low level of evaluation effort, client-change evaluations are less related to impact on program development than are evaluations using descriptive statistics about clients