Bickman, Leonard

(b. 1941, Bronx, New York). Ph.D. City University of New York; M.A. Columbia University; B.S. City College of New York.

Bickman was among the first evaluators to recognize the importance of not doing “black box” evaluations in which only inputs and outputs were measured. He stressed the significance of understanding how a program was supposed to produce a predicted outcome. His alternative approach provided a different way of understanding program success and failure. Bickman also led several award-winning evaluations that demonstrated how to use program theory and how to conduct large-scale cost-effectiveness evaluations that had significant policy impact.

His professional undertakings have been most influenced by people early in his career, such as Stanley Milgram and Harold Proshansky, professors of Bickman's at the City University of New York who taught him to ask creative research questions outside the mainstream. Evaluator colleagues Donald Campbell and Tom Cook helped him to understand the finer points of experimental design. His friend Will Shadish exposed him to the breadth of program evaluation theories.

After more than a decade of conducting large scale evaluations of child and adolescent mental health services, in which he found that systems changes resulted in increased costs but not better clinical outcomes, Bickman turned his attention to attempting to develop an effective intervention. In his current career endeavors, he is combining his background in social psychology with his contributions in program theory and logic modeling to produce a theory of change. His theory under study combines attribution theory, cognitive dissonance theory, and self-regulation theory to better understand the conditions under which new programs or interventions will be implemented and maintained. His theory is currently being evaluated for the determination of whether and how the behavior of pediatricians can be changed as they diagnose and treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Bickman is Past President and Board Member of the American Evaluation Association. He is Coeditor, along with his colleague Debra Rog, of the Sage series on applied social research and The Handbook of Applied Social Research. He has been designated among the top 5% in productivity nationally among faculty in Developmental Sciences 2001 and carries an extensive history of accolades, including his most recent honors: Vanderbilt University Benefactors of the Commons Designation Award 1999–2001; American Evaluation Association Award for the Outstanding Evaluation of 2000; 1998/1999 American Psychological Association Public Interest Award for Distinguished Contribution to Research in Public Policy; 1998 Distinguished Paper Award for Systems of Care, Florida Mental Health Institute; and 1998 Distinguished Faculty Award, Vanderbilt University.