AM last page: A snapshot of three common program evaluation approaches for medical education.

References 1. Fitzpatrick JL, Sanders JR, Worthen BR. Program Evaluation: Alternative Approaches and Practical Guidelines. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education; 2011. 2. Christie CA, Alkin MC. An evaluation theory tree. In: Alkin MC, ed. Evaluation Roots. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; 2013:11–57. 3. Stufflebeam DL. The relevance of the CIPP evaluation model for educational accountability. J Res Dev Educ. 1971;5:19–25. 4. Durning SJ, Hemmer P, Pangaro LN. The structure of program evaluation: An approach for evaluating a course, clerkship, or components of a residency or fellowship training program. Teach Learn Med. 2007;19:308–318. 5. Musick DW. A conceptual model for program evaluation in graduate medical education. Acad Med. 2006;81:759–765. Author contact: [email protected] Program evaluation, or programmatic assessment, is the application of defensible criteria to determine the worth or merit of a program, project, or curriculum.1 “Decision-oriented,” “outcomes-oriented,” and “expert-oriented” are three common approaches to program evaluation1 in medical education. This snapshot provides a brief review of program evaluation within each approach along the following dimensions: Do internal stakeholders or external stakeholders drive the evaluation? Is the evaluation examining a broad scope of the program or delving deeply into one or two particular aspects in greater detail? Is this evaluation reasonably straightforward to complete, or does it require specialized knowledge and resources? Do the evaluation results benefit local decision makers or those in a broader audience? Does the evaluation rely on a theory, or is it largely atheoretical?