Public Policy Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2803
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Item Generating and Using Evidence for Program Design: Lessons from Evaluations in Pakistan and Peru(2015) Picon, Mario Giuseppe; Graham, Carol; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The design and implementation of development programs is driven by a set of assumptions on development interventions that typically overlook the role of context; particularly social norms and institutions. Moreover, evaluation is still focused in understanding if an intervention works, instead on how to make it work better. This dissertation discusses the evaluation of a marketing intervention in Pakistan, and the evaluation of a participatory development strategy in Peru. Neither intervention produced the expected results. Rather than stopping there, I discuss the reasons behind their lack of effectiveness, specifically looking at elements for program re-design. The first essay discusses the randomized evaluation of a marketing intervention in Pakistan. The hypothesis was that given the positive role models featured in brochures promoting a microfinance product, women would increase their demand for loans. The brochure, however, had a negative effect in program take up among the poorest women. The likely reason behind this: prevailing social norms regarding role of women. The second essay stresses that the randomized evaluation experiment should not be taken as indicating that marketing is ineffective to improve the impact of microfinance in rural Pakistan, and that the role of social norms in microfinance can be internalized and used in the re-design of the brochure along several dimensions. Using theory of change and realistic evaluation approaches, I propose a framework that combines formative and process evaluation to design and pilot alternative marketing intervention in Pakistan. The third essay features the evaluation of the participatory strategy of El Alto, in Peru. This was a study with very limited data and virtually no control of the research team over the intervention. A mix of quantitative and qualitative techniques is used for outcome and intervention evaluation, and the framework presented on the second essay is used to understand why the participatory strategy has not been successful in sustaining participation. Originally an evaluation of small pretensions, it was used as an opportunity to revisit the objectives of the strategy, improve intervention design, and establishing a monitoring system based on administrative data. A case is made for complementary, context-based interventions.Item Leadership and Safety Climate in High-Risk Military Organizations(2007-04-25) Adamshick, Mark Henry; Gansler, Jacques S; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Preventable accidents and mishaps continue to degrade the readiness of U.S. military forces. In 2006, the National Safety Council reported an annual rate of over 30 accidental fatalities per 100,000 Department of Defense members and estimated that preventable injuries and illnesses cost the department approximately $21 billion per year. Reducing these occurrences was the policy mandate of the Secretary of Defense in 2003. He challenged the military service secretaries to reduce their mishap rates by 50 percent over a two-year period ending September 30, 2005. While each of the military services formulated its own compliance strategy, none of them met the reduction goal. In some cases, the mishap rate actually increased. The purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate the Department of the Navy's (DON) policy compliance strategy and to assess its shortcomings and areas for future improvements. The Navy focused their efforts on leadership-intervention best practices designed to elevate the safety climate in their high-risk units, primarily their aviation components. These units contribute almost 90 percent of the annual mishap cost due to preventable accidents. DON policy-makers theorized that certain leadership interventions would improve safety climate thereby reducing the likelihood that unit members would engage in unsafe behavior both on and off the job. This dissertation evaluates the validity of that general theory, and the appropriateness of the specific leadership interventions chosen, in two distinct data collection and analysis phases. In the first phase, statistical analysis is conducted on a safety-climate survey database maintained by the Naval Post-Graduate School containing 20,000 Navy and Marine Corps military survey respondents assigned to F/A-18 aircraft squadrons completed over the past 5 years. In Phase 2, Commander, Naval Air Forces Atlantic Fleet authorized climate research in four Navy F/A-18 squadrons located at Oceana Naval Air Station. Upon analysis, the intervention methods implemented in the Navy's mishap reduction strategy showed little correlation with safety climate improvement. Phase 2 analysis identified several organizational programs and specific leadership qualities that correlate with elevated safety climate and revealed a preliminary causal relationship between safety climate and safety performance.