Major Part of Work on Evaluation Project Completed
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Major Part of Work on Evaluation Project Completed |
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Cox Center Director Dr. Lee
B. Becker has completed the bulk of the work on an evaluation of the Knight
International Press Fellowship Program and delivered preliminary reports
to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami. The Foundation
is using the findings of the study for internal purposes. The Cox Center, in collaboration
with the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., undertook
a year-long assessment of the impact of the Knight program, an international
journalism training initiative operated by ICFJ. To obtain reports of impact
from those with whom the Knight Fellow worked, Dr. Becker and two colleagues
attempted to find as many of those who worked with the Knight Fellows
in 11 different countries as possible and to conduct interviews with them.
The 11 countries studied were the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland,
Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru. The researchers used two interview
techniques. First, they asked those they contacted to complete a written
questionnaire, generally with one of the researchers in close proximity.
Next, they asked most of those they contacted to answer follow-up questions.
The first questionnaire contained clusters of items designed to measure
the perceived impact of the interaction with the Knight Fellow. The interview
included a variety of questions designed to obtain both discrete indications
of impact and examples of that impact. The researchers interviewed
at least 31 people in each of the 11 countries they visited. The smallest
number of interviews completed was in Poland, where they successfully
contacted and interviewed 31 persons who had worked with the Knight Fellows
there. They completed 92 interviews in Ecuador. In sum, they completed
531 interviews. The project was designed to
examine evidence of impact of the Knight International Press Fellowship
program on the journalists and on others in the country with whom the
Knight Fellows came into contact, the practice of journalism in the countries
visited by the Knight Fellows, the media and media-related institutions
in the countries visited by the Knight Fellows and the countries themselves.
Graduate students in the Cox
Center currently are transcribing taped interviews with the 33 Fellows
whose work the project assessed. They also are compiling electronic records
of the responses of those interviewed to specific questions on examples
of program impact. These will be released to the Foundation and ICFJ in
early 2000. "This has been a very important
undertaking for the Cox Center," Dr. Becker said. "It has given us the
opportunity to look at the effectiveness of an important international
exchange program as a way of gaining insight generally into the effectiveness
of the training of journalists abroad. The findings will help not only
the Knight Foundation and ICFJ, but others of us who engage in these types
of initiatives." Dr. Becker said he expects
to be able to release results of the study later in the year. Dr. Melinda Hawley and Dr.
Patricia Priest assisted in the evaluation project. Dr. Hawley is a public
service associate in the Grady College and associate director of the James
M. Cox Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies, the domestic sister
organization of the Cox Center. Dr. Priest was a postdoctoral fellow in
the Cox Center at the time of the project.
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