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Record W326774523 · doi:10.3138/cjpe.025.003

Constructing and Verifying Program Theory Using Source Documentation

2010· article· en· W326774523 on OpenAlexvenueno aff
Ralph Renger

Bibliographic record

VenueCanadian Journal of Program Evaluation · 2010
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldDecision Sciences
TopicEvaluation and Performance Assessment
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsDocumentationComputer scienceA priori and a posterioriLogic modelManagement scienceProgram Design LanguageSoftware engineeringProgramming languageEpistemologyEngineeringSociology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract: Making the program theory explicit is an essential first step in Theory Driven Evaluation (TDE). Once explicit, the program logic can be established making necessary links between the program theory, activities, and outcomes. Despite its importance evaluators often encounter situations where the program theory is not explicitly stated. Under such circumstances evaluators require alternatives to generate a program theory with limited time and resources. Using source documentation (e.g., lesson plans, mission statements) to develop program theory is discussed in the evaluation literature as a viable alternative when time and resources do not permit a priori program theory development. Unfortunately, the evaluation literature is devoid of methodology illustrating how to translate source documentation into an explicitly stated program theory. The article describes the steps in using source documentation to develop and verify a program theory and illustrates the application of these steps. It concludes with a discussion about the feasibility and limitations of this methodology.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.089
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.259
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Teacher disagreement score0.089
Threshold uncertainty score0.472

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0890.259
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0100.005
Science and technology studies0.0030.004
Scholarly communication0.0080.008
Open science0.0030.005
Research integrity0.0020.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0070.002

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.317
GPT teacher head0.552
Teacher spread0.235 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreMethods

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations22
Published2010
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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