Dr. Michael A. Harnar Dr. Michael A. Harnar Senior Associate Research and Evaluation
Dr. Harnar has spent more than 10 years evaluating a variety of programs, including educational programs for underserved minorities and community college faculty development programs. He is a research methodologist with experience in evaluation design and implementation, database design and development. He prefers a stakeholder-engaged, participatory evaluation practices and comfortably employs both quantitative and qualitative methods serving program design, program development and end-of-cycle summative reporting.
Dr. Harnar's research focuses on participatory evaluation and data systems utilization. He recently completed a large (n=1,228) three-phase study of the international membership of the American Evaluation Association. His sequential, mixed-method study employed online wikis, web-delivered surveys, online asynchronous logic modeling, and synchronous webinars. For this study he employed an innovative web-based modeling software that involved practitioners from around the globe in modeling their own participatory evaluation practice. His research produced a preliminary model of transformative participatory evaluation that is advancing the development of evaluation theory.
Dr. Harnar joined Mosaic Network's research and evaluation department in 2012 to provide internal evaluation support to Mosaic, increase external evaluation support to Mosaic's clients and to ensure a robust evaluation focus in Mosaic's future projects. Currently, he is designing an evaluation with the Center for the Study of Social Policy, serving on a statewide roundtable for the Strengthening Families implementation in California, and improving the utilization of Mosaic's data systems' reporting capabilities. Dr. Harnar received his Ph.D. in Evaluation and Applied Research Methods from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA.