How to evaluate educational programmes in the health professions

This paper advocates an alternative approach to the evaluation of educational programmes in the health professions. In the past, effectiveness of programmes has been judged by casual observations, visitation reports by outside experts, student performance at nationwide examinations, systematic surveys and experimental research. Decisions have been made based on either one or more of the above methods. It is being argued that these methods are not always appropriate and mostly inadequate in providing a holistic description and judgement of the educational programme. Social science disciplines have contributed to the development of case study, an alternative methodology, for evaluating educational programmes. The case study design is emerging as a legitimate approach for evaluating educational programmes. Qualitative methods such as participant observation, interviewing and documentary analysis have been found to bring new insights in evaluating short-term and long-term programmes in medical and allied professions. Although qualitative methods are emphasized in case studies, quantitative data from survey instruments can increase the credibility and understanding of the evaluation results. Different measures have been suggested to deal with questions of validity and reliability in case study evaluation.