Dr. Kent Mann

The purpose for conducting this research was to identify the types of standards used in randomly selected Nebraska high schools for the evaluation of student activity programs. Four research objectives were designed to guide the study: (a) to examine the degree to which the standards developed by the Joint Committee on Standards for Education Evaluation (1981) were determined to be appropriate for use in evaluation of activity programs in selected Nebraska high schools, (b) to identify which Joint Committee standards were implemented to evaluate activity programs, (c) to determine if a common set of evaluation standards was applied to activity programs by school officials, and (d) to determine if there was a relationship between the size of the school and the use of a formal instrument for evaluation of activity programs. A sample population of 120 high schools was selected from all Nebraska high schools that were members of the Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA) during the 1989-90 school year. Response rate for the survey was 71%. Analysis of the data collected from the survey questionnaire supported the following conclusions: (a) The Joint Committee standards are appropriate for use in the evaluation of activity programs in Nebraska high schools. Each of the 30 standards presented in the survey questionnaire was reported to be appropriate by a majority of the respondents, (b) Survey respondents in this study reported very few, if any, of the Joint Committee standards to be implemented for activity program evaluation, (c) Implementation rates for each standard within each high school class were compared to the implementation rate for the standard in the total population. A set of 10 standards composed of Propriety Standards and Accuracy Standards was found to be statistically significant in the analysis of the data, and (d) Nebraska school officials seldom use any type of a formal evaluation instrument to assess activity programs. Of the 85 respondents in the sample population, nine reported use of a formal instrument to evaluate athletic activity programs and three reported use of a formal instrument to evaluate non-athletic programs in their respective schools.