Overview and rationale for the Systematic Screening and Assessment Method

This chapter gives the rationale and conceptual defense for the Systematic Screening and Assessment (SSA) Method, a way to identify the most promising innovations in preparation for rigorous evaluation. The SSA Method starts by identifying the innovations that real‐world practitioners have developed and then systematically assesses which innovations will offer the greatest payoff from further evaluation. Through sequential purchase of evaluative information, the SSA Method aims to avoid a variety of problems that evaluators encounter in studying innovations. Besides the identification of promising innovations for evaluation, the benefits include expert technical assistance and feedback to innovators, cross‐site syntheses of trends and common practices, and cost efficiency compared to evaluating innovations that have not been selected or screened for promise.