The Structure of Stages in the Evaluation Cycle

An Event Sequence Analysis

Abstract

From time to time, research on evaluation issues deals with a sequence of events or episodes which an analyst would prefer to examine in its entirety rather than event by event. However, quantitative methods for comparing sequences of events or activities and analyzing their similarity among populations and samples have rarely been applied in social research. This article describes the tasks undertaken during the cycle of evaluation of housing programs by CMHC prior to 1997 and analyses the major evaluation products in terms of the similarity of constituent tasks. A brief introduction to combinatorial methods for measuring similarities among whole character sequences is presented and new research applications are proposed. The analysis uses a new program for sequence alignment analysis called ClustalG, which is a modification of the ClustalX program used in molecular biology.