Client and Program Characteristics

Abstract

From the first admissions in December 1975 through March 1981, the Gerontology Program had provided treatment to 840 clients. Who were these clients? Where did they come from? How long were they in treatment, and where did they go after treatment? The first step in evaluating a treatment program, and for that matter in planning one, is to define the population which was served by the program. This chapter attempts to do just that, namely to describe the clients of the Gerontology Program. It is concerned with the demographic characteristics of the clients, the type and length of treatment that they received, and their discharge destination. In addition, it provides answers to two simple but very basic evaluation questions. First, did the program treat the population it was designed to serve, that is, were the clients representative of the targeted population? And, second, was the sample of clients used for empirical evaluation of the program representative of the total client population treated?