This book is bound to become a well-thumbed treasure for graduate
students and researchers working on research designs and grant proposals.
The clarity of the thinking and presentation reminds me of the
Campbell and Stanley (1963) classic. Yet, there is much more here. In
fact, there is enough to help guide practice researchers—whom Fraser
and his colleagues call intervention researchers because the ideas also
apply to service and policy evaluations—through fi ve critical steps.
The authors have been working on intervention studies for a combined
total of more than 100 years and it shows. They have now polished
their way down to the essential elements of how to develop and test
interventions that can add meaningfully to our capacity to serve. At the
same time, they illustrate their framework with a wide range of fresh and
informative exemplars from contemporary social work and health
research efforts, and they tackle topics that readers have a need-to-know
about but have never mastered. These topics include understanding of
the challenges of evaluating programs in different locations, correcting
(as best possible) for biased samples, and the use of tailoring variables.