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Confirmative Evaluation: Practical Strategies for Valuing Continuous Improvement sets out to fill the gap and provide a well-referenced and highly practical book for practitioners in training, evaluation, and HPT on why, when, and how to plan and conduct confirmative evaluation of training programs. The purpose of the book is to ground the practice of confirmative evaluation in the literature on the theory and application of evaluation and research. The Instructional Technology and Training Series focuses on instructional technology and training, so we view evaluation as a technology in itself and suggest how to use hard and soft technology techniques and tools to plan and implement confirmative evaluation of training programs.

This book presents an overview of full-scope evaluation (formative, summative, confirmative, and meta) using the Dessinger-Moseley Full-Scope Evaluation Model. The model also illustrates how confirmative evaluation fits within the current typology of evaluation. After a close-up look at full-scope evaluation, we present and discuss the Moseley-Dessinger Confirmative Evaluation Model. The remainder of the book concentrates on how to use hard and soft technologies to plan and conduct an effective and efficient confirmative evaluation. We also suggest future directions for utilization of confirmative evaluation as an integral part of the technology of training and learning. The focus of the Instructional Technology and Training Series is training. However, the theory and practice of confirmative evaluation applies to the evaluation of all performance improvement interventions, instructional and noninstructional. Therefore, we ask the reader to make a quantum leap whenever necessary to adapt the practical strategies in this book to noninstructional interventions such as incentive and reward programs, suggestion systems, career development initiatives, and so forth.