[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Next Steps: A Human Service Program System Exemplar

## Details

**Authors** Wasserman D

**Year** 2008

**Publisher** Evaluation and Program Planning 31(3):327-329

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Systems Science

**Secondary disciplines** Public Policy

**Reading level** intermediate

**Kind of engagement** scholarly

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2008.04.006) 
10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2008.04.006

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

A conceptual application and exemplar. Wasserman applies DSRP to the structure of human-service programs — the relationships between provider systems, target systems, participants, environments and program effects. Not an experimental study.

### What they found (results)

Wasserman concludes that systematically applying the four rules can help evaluators draw clearer distinctions among evaluation types, and build more systematic approaches for constructing and testing theories of change that represent the many relationships and perspectives affecting human-service programs. She presents the paper as a beginning of that work.

## Commentary

### In short

Strong applied adoption and extension. Wasserman accepts the four rules and shows how they can structure real human-service program evaluation, using DSRP to construct an evaluation architecture and generate evaluation questions. That is evidence of applicability and generativity — not controlled evidence that DSRP improves evaluation outcomes.

### In more detail

Wasserman begins from the four rules and develops a human-service program exemplar. A program is modelled as a provider system intentionally attempting to produce effects in a target human system; both are themselves nested systems, and each sits in a broader environment containing further relationships and perspectives.

That decomposition generates evaluation questions about program implementation, participant change, organisational conditions, family and community environments, and the relationships among them. Her argument is that evaluators cannot examine every possible relationship or perspective — but that using DSRP explicitly makes those selections more systematic, and improves how theory-of-change models are built and tested.

### Response

Wasserman applies the four rules to human-service program evaluation, building an evaluation architecture and generating evaluation questions from them. Evidence of applicability; no comparison with evaluations conducted otherwise.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**How to cite this** Wasserman D (2008). Next Steps: A Human Service Program System Exemplar. Evaluation and Program Planning 31(3):327-329.