Abstract
This report concerns an attempt by an invited outside agent to clarify—as opposed to modify-the attitudes and opinions of teachers in a high school with regard to issues in education and drug use. In order to measure changes in the school, survey and organizational analysis techniques were used. In the former type of analysis, factoring is explored as a means for measuring shifts in issue-orientation over time, and in the latter type an organizational framework is developed in order to conceptualize major dimensions of the school as an institution with the purpose of allowing the investigator to measure change over time.
The findings raise some questions about the practicality of evaluating projects at an organizational level which emphasize value-clarification as opposed to persuasion techniques. The difficulty encountered with value clarification was that the investigator and the change agent were not able to predict or set expectations for the direction in which change, if any, would take place. However, this tended to be a characteristic of the earlier phase of the project. Later on, organizational goals for the school became clearer, making evaluation more meaningful. Changes were nonetheless noted in the client school which appear to be in line with the content of the agent's intervention. These changes did not take place in a comparison school.
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