Research & Evaluation

EPPC has built a national reputation as a source for solid scholarship in research and evaluation.  Part of our mission is to assist Faith Based and Community Based Organizations in identifying, pursuing, developing, and managing funding for sponsored projects. EPPC can provide professional administrative, management, and research assistance to the faith and community based organizations in securing funds, conducting research, and communicating the findings on a national scale.  EPPC advances the theory, practice, and utilization of evaluative research within Faith Based and Community Based Organizations.  Our principal activities are consultation for research, development, dissemination, service, instruction, and national and international leadership in evaluation. Advocacy is meaningless in the absence of credible data. 

EPPC conducts in-depth nationwide research on the role and efficacy of social service programs for both the secular and faith based communities. Our goal is to fill broad gaps in knowledge about the relative effectiveness and capacity of faith-based and secular services in the issues involved in public funding. EPPC's independent and non-partisan research seeks to contribute to a more informed debate on this important issue among policymakers, stakeholders, journalists and the public.  We subscribe to the American Evaluation Association Guiding Principles.

Led by renowned scholar Dr. Stephen A. Rollin, academic research at EPPC accommodates in-house scholars and invited scholars to participate in various projects. Dr. Steve Rollin is a retired Professor (and formerly Executive Associate Dean and Director of the Center for Education Research and Policy Studies) in the College of Education at Florida State University in Tallahassee. His research has been supported by the United States Department of Justice and Education, as well as various agencies throughout the state of Florida, and he has worked in New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and Venezuela. Dr. Rollin has been president of Capital City Youth Services, the Neighborhood Network, and the Literacy Volunteers of Gadsden County, Florida. He is widely published and his work has appeared in various national and international forums. Dr. Bowman's research has also been widely disseminated.  He is the former Director of Research for the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Chief Education Policy Analyst for Florida Governor Jeb Bush.   

Areas of interest include a focus on welfare, poverty, service delivery issues, data for research, policies affecting children, youth, and families. EPPC has a particular interest in the subject areas of Child Welfare, Data and Information Policy, Data Sources and Statistics, Early Childhood and School Readiness, Employment, Family and Marriage Issues, Food and Nutrition, Home and Community-Based Services, Homelessness, K-20 Education Policy and Reform, Immigration, Insurance, Medicaid, Mental Health, Poverty, School Choice, Substance Abuse (Alcohol and Drug Abuse), Welfare & Self-Sufficiency and Youth/Teens/Adolescents.  

The EPPC leadership and team has a strong background in policy development, policy coordination, legislation development, strategic planning, policy research, evaluation, and economic analysis. We invite you to visit Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation (PARE) an on-line journal supported entirely by volunteer efforts. Its purpose is to provide access to refereed articles that can have a positive impact on assessment, research, evaluation, and teaching practice.

The investigations of our scholars attempt to identify the evidence on the comparative effectiveness of Faith Based and Community Based Organizations in solving various social problems of concern to the nation at large.  Above all, the investigations performed by EPPC are based on the highest standards of enquiry. EPPC strives to:   

(a) Promote scientific and educational purposes, as those terms are used in Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code, in connection with the science and practice of evaluation in both the public and private sectors of society.

(b) Improve evaluation theory, practice and methods; increase evaluation use; promote evaluation as a profession; and support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action.

(c) Engage in a diversity of activities and enter into, perform, and carry out contracts of any kind neces­sary or convenient to, or incidental to, the accomplishment of any one or more of the nonprofit purposes of the organization.

EPPC knows that more than ever, organizations need to make decisions based on the best possible information. Government, business, and nonprofit entities face limited resources, competitive pressures, and urgent client needs. As a result, agencies and organizations require well-planned activities, timely performance, and cost-effective and replicable results.  Knowledge management does not only act as a catalyst for innovation and creativity but also provides the means by which 'innovative ideas' can be captured, shared and leveraged, and lead to new ideas. A prime resource for variant organizations as they increasingly turn to using more rigorous methods to support their strategic decisions and to guide their management practices is the extant literature .  Reliable evidence, well communicated, can make an important difference in future policy development. We are passionate about learning and communicating what works - and what does not work - in improving the economic and social well-being of all people. 

The ongoing work of EPPC focuses on four topical areas for research:  

·        Developments in federal and state law regarding service partnerships between religious organizations and the government, as well as legal analysis looking at Federal and State constitutional questions;

·        Changes in the policy environment for faith-based social services in Washington, DC and state capitols around the nation;

·        Scope of faith and community based organizations in addressing established and newly articulated goals of public policy; and 

·        To increase the limited research on the effectiveness of services provided by of faith and community based organizations

Products and activities from these research efforts form the substantive content, around which EPPC performs its primary missions:

·        Develop appropriate cost effective evaluative and research designs;

·        Create a network to establish a research community among scholars in this field; 

·        Publish the results of the research;

·        Dissemination of our findings;

·        Present best practice models and release the results;

·        Develop a social science research function to determine the highest priority areas of social services;

·        Shared commitment to social justice

EPPC is prepared to play the dual roles of technical assistance provider and/or evaluator.  The challenge is to build both strong programs worthy of rigorous testing and reliable research designs that can tell us whether the next generation of policies and programs are effective. In this undertaking, we attempt to strike a balance between initiatives that are bold enough to make a substantial difference but that also are replicable, scalable, and affordable. And we bring to each issue a conviction that answering the “what difference” question is essential but seldom sufficient; policymakers also need to know how and why a given policy or program did or did not make a difference.