A social worker is charged with evaluating the effectiveness of a mental health outpatient treatment program. He constructs an evaluation strategy that consists of collecting data on the quality of services by holding focus groups with current clients so that they can relay their firsthand experiences. In addition, he uses existing agency data to compute the proportion of clients who have been rehospitalized since admission. The social worker is conducting what type of evaluation?

Evaluation methods can be classified as either qualitative or quantitative. In qualitative evaluations, data are collected through observations and/ or interviews. Findings are generated via identification of themes in the language used and content contained in the communication observed or generated. The focus groups employed by the social worker are qualitative in nature. Contrarily, quantitative evaluations are conducted by making numerical comparisons and statistical inferences. The social worker’s comparison of the number of clients rehospitalized versus the number who were not is a quantitative approach. Since both qualitative and quantitative methods are being used, the social worker is using a mixed method approach to evaluation.