Sociology 2155: Groups--"The Stolen Eye "

Your group has been hired to carry out an evaluation of Jane Elliott's workshops on racism, and she has agreed to cooperate with you. Depending on your results, several large organizations--religious, union, and educational--are interested not just in hiring Elliott herself to do training for them but in working with Elliott to train a multiplicity of additional individuals who are capable of doing what she is doing. Your evaluation, in other words, may have important consequences.

1. How will you establish the goals and objectives of her training program? Will you want to deal primarily with attitudes or also with behaviors, and if so, how might you measure behaviors?

2. Will your plan involve pretesting and post-testing? Why or why not?

3. How could you involve a control group, or might it be more practical to establish an alternative treatment group? What do you see as the pros and cons of either choice?

4. How will you deal with the fact that these organizations envision using Elliott as a trainer so that ultimately the workshops will be led not by Elliott hereself but by the people she trains? Is there any way to take account of that in your evaluation research?