Darlene Russ-Eft, Ph.D. has over 30 years of experience in undertaking research related to training design and effectiveness.  She is currently Professor of Adult and Higher Education in the College of Education at Oregon State University.  There she teaches masters and doctoral courses in research, program evaluation, and learning theory, and she advises masters and doctoral students in their thesis and dissertation work. 

Darlene’s recent client work includes: 

• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Mechanical Engineering, University of Nevada at Reno
• Cisco
• National Arts Strategies

Prior to joining Oregon State University in 2002, she was Director of Research at AchieveGlobal and Division Director of Research for Zenger-Miller.  She undertook evaluation work related to the effectiveness of the Supervision™ program.  She directed the research related to FrontLine Leadership™, Leadership 2000™, Working™, and other AchieveGlobal and Zenger-Miller programs.  

 Dr. Russ-Eft has published four books on program evaluation (two of which are in their second edition), one book on needs assessment (which is in its third edition), and one book on instructional design.  In addition, her research contributed to the book, Everyone a Leader: A Grassroots Model for the New Workplace.  She has published over 30 book chapters and over 60 journal articles, many of which are related to learning, training, and evaluation of learning interventions.

 She has been named a Fellow of the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance, and Development.  She served as President of the Academy of Human Resource Development and early as Editor of the journal, Human Resource Development Quarterly.  She received the Editor of the Year Award from Times Mirror (for her research), the Outstanding Scholar Award from the Academy of Human Resource Development, and the Outstanding Research Article Award from American Society for Training and Development (now called Association for Talent Development).  Her B.A. in psychology is from the College of Wooster, her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology are from the University of Michigan.

Selected Books

Preskill, H., & Russ-Eft, D. (2015). Building evaluation capacity: 72 activities for teaching and training (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Sleezer, C. M., Russ-Eft, D. F., & Gupta, K. (2014). A practical guide to needs assessment (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Koszalka, T. A., Russ-Eft, D., & Reisser, R. (2013). Instructional designer competencies: The standards (4th ed.). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.

Russ-Eft, D., & Preskill, H. (2009). Evaluation in organizations: A systematic approach to enhancing learning, performance, and change (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Russ-Eft, D. F., Bober, M. J., de la Teja, I., Foxon, M., & Koszalka, T. A. (2008). Evaluator competencies: Standards for the practice of evaluation in organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (207 pages).

Bergmann, H., Hurson, K., & Russ-Eft, D. (1999). Everyone a leader: A grassroots model for the new workplace. New York, NY: Wiley. (244 pages)

Selected Refereed Book Chapters

Russ-Eft, D. (2013). Behavior modeling. Invited chapter for C. Valentin & J. Walton (Eds.). Human resource development : Practices and orthodoxies. Houndmills, Basingstoke, England: Palgrave McMillan.

Russ-Eft, D. (2012). Evaluation within organizations: So, what are the values? Invited chapter for M. Lee (Ed.). HRD as we know it: Speeches that have shaped and developed the field of HRD. New York, NY: Routledge.

Russ-Eft, D. (2010). Toward a meta-theory of learning and performance. Invited chapter for M. Malloch & B. O’Connor (Ed.). International Handbook of Workplace Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Selected Refereed Journal Articles

Star, S., Russ-Eft, D., Braverman, M., & Levine, R. (2016). Performance measurement and performance indicators: A literature review and a proposed model for practical adoption. Human Resource Development Review, doi: 10.1177/1534484316636220

Sleezer, C. M., Russ-Eft, D. F., & Gupta, K. (2015). Learning, training, and performance timeline: A walk through history.  Performance Improvement, 54 (2), 7-15.

Russ-Eft, D. (2015). Human resource development, evaluation, and sustainability: What are the relationships? Human Resource Development International; Special Issue on Sustainability. 17, 545-559. doi: 10.1080/13678868.2014.954190

Russ-Eft, D., Dickison, P., & Levine, R. (2010). Taking the pulse of training transfer: Instructor quality and EMT certification test results. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 21, 291-306. doi: 10.1002/hrdq.20052

Taylor, P., Russ-Eft, D., & Taylor, H. (2009). Gilding the outcome by tarnishing the past: Inflationary biases in retrospective pretests. American Journal of Evaluation, 30, 31-43.

Taylor, P., Russ-Eft, D., Taylor, H. (2009). The transfer of management training from alternative perspectives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 104-121.

Russ-Eft, D., & Preskill, H. (2008). Improving the quality of evaluation participation: A meta-evaluation. Human Resource Development International, 11, 35-50.

Russ-Eft, D., Dickison, P., & Levine, R. (2005). Instructor quality affecting emergency medical technician (EMT) preparedness: A LEADS project. International Journal of Training and Development, 9, 256–270.

Taylor, P., Russ-Eft, D., & Chan, D. (2005). The effectiveness of behavior modeling training across settings and features of study design. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 692–709.