Assessing Procedural Descriptiveness: Rationale and Illustrative Study

Procedural descriptiveness refers to the extent to which the activities defined in a procedure are complete and specific. Procedures used in research or human service that are poorly described raise important questions such as whether the procedures can be replicated or generalized and, in the case of human service, whether they can be properly evaluated and made accountable. The assessment of procedural descriptiveness is an important and heretofore neglected area that should be an integral part of assessment methodology. To illustrate the assess­ ment of procedural descriptiveness, the critical incident technique was employed . to obtain a sample of limitations of a case-management procedure in a family