Revisiting Bennett’s Hierarchy and Targeting Outcomes of Programs Model: Implications for Strengthening Program Development and Evaluation

Fifty years ago, Claude Bennett published the article, Up the Hierarchy in the Journal of Extension, which laid the foundation for program evaluation in Cooperative Extension. It had seven steps to explain the concept of evaluation in Extension: resources, activities, participation, reactions, KASA, practices, and SEE conditions. Extension educators and specialists used this as a guide to develop, deliver, and evaluate Extension programs. However, one limitation of the hierarchy was where do program development/planning fit into this hierarchy. To address this, Rockwell and Bennett (2004) revised the Targeting Outcomes of Programs (TOP) model developed by them in 1994. This model provided a strong connection between program development and evaluation on a continuum. In this abstract, we propose a Quadrant Analysis to connect program development and program evaluation using the TOP model and Extension evaluation approach model (Franz and Townson, 2008) using our SAS project as an example.