Rog, Debra J.

(b. 1956, New Bedford, Massachusetts). Ph.D. Social Psychology, Vanderbilt University; M.A. Social Psychology, Kent State University; B.S. American International College.

Rog is Senior Research Associate in Vanderbilt University's Institute for Public Policy Studies and Director of the Center for Mental Health Policy in Washington, DC. She has more than 20 years of experience in program evaluation and applied research and has directed numerous multisite evaluations and research projects.

Her primary contribution to the theory of evaluation is to the study of evaluation itself, beginning with her dissertation, a study of evaluability assessment, for which she received the Robert Perloff President's Prize for Promising Evaluator from the Evaluation Research Society in 1985. She has continued to reflect on the practice of evaluation, especially with respect to conducting multisite evaluations and conducting research with hard-to-reach, vulnerable populations. Putting these ideas into practice, she has conducted private foundation and federally funded, large-scale, national, cross-site studies on program and system initiatives for homeless families and for homeless and domiciled individuals with serious mental illness and on collaborations for violence prevention. Primary influences on her evaluation work include Donald Campbell and Carol Weiss, as well as Len Bickman and Terry Hedrick, with whom she was fortunate to have worked closely.

She has been actively involved in the American Evaluation Association, having served twice on its board; worked as Local Arrangements Chair for the 1990 meeting and Program Cochair for the 1996 meeting; and served on numerous committees, including chairing the awards committee for 3 years. She has also been involved in training practitioners, especially in developing and using logic models, performing case studies, and conducting research with hard-to-reach, vulnerable populations. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Public Health Association.

She has written a number of articles on evaluation methods, edited several volumes of New Directions for Evaluation, and coedited the Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods. Since 1980, she has coedited the Applied Social Research Methods series of textbooks. She has been recognized by the Eastern Evaluation Research Society, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Evaluation Association, and the Knowledge Utilization Society for her contributions to evaluation and applied research and by the American Journal of Evaluation for the evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Homeless Families Program.