You Are Hired as an External Evaluator for a New

Multiple Choice

You are hired as an external evaluator for a new, innovative therapeutic program for children with autism that has not yet been empirically tested.The program director tells you that five staff members will lose their jobs if the evaluation does not show the intervention to be effective, and that the parents will be so angry, they will never seek services at their agency again.You analyze the results and find that the children's symptoms did not improve after participating in the new program.What is the most ethical course of action?

A) Do not report the results correctly because you do not want the staff to lose their jobs in this tough economy.Contributing to workers losing their jobs would be unethical.
B) Indicate that the program was effective so that the families do not lose faith in the staff and the larger social service system, in general.Creating distrust in service delivery would be unethical.
C) Write the report with the correct results but write the limitation section so that it seems like the results are not very reliable in order to downplay the negative findings.
D) Write a draft of the report balancing the positive and negative aspects to show the program director before disseminating the final report to other stakeholders.