Using Research Methods to Evaluate Your Extension Program

For Extension practitioners, research is typically considered an ominous practice reserved for ivory tower academics, and evaluation is nearly as mysterious. Therefore, Extension agents often shy away from using scientific methods to evaluate educational programs. However, research is simply a methodical way of finding answers to questions used to discover new information or prove scientific theories. And research methods can also be useful to effectively evaluate an educational program or its participants in the most objective way. This article presents an overview of research methods that Extension agents can use in program evaluation. It includes a bibliography of helpful resources.