Enhancing the possibility of success by measuring the probability of failure in an educational program

Process Analysis is a method for identifying and then measuring the probability of events that could cause the failure of a program. It begins by identifying one primary and significant program objective. The ultimate result is a cause-and-effect tree structure of events that could contribute to failure to achieve the stated objective. Each event on the tree also has a posterior probability calculated for it (the probability that, were the objective not achieved, this event would have contributed to the failure) and a normalized posterior probability, to allow comparisons among the different branches of the tree. This article describes the steps in Process Analysis and illustrates the method with data from the evaluation of a pilot instructional program at an elementary school. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.