Donna Mertens

Dr Donna M Mertens, Professor, Department of Educational Foundations and Research at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, teaches research methods and programme evaluation to graduate-level deaf and hearing students in multiple programmes. These include education, administration, psychology, social work, audiology and international development.

 

The major focus of Donna's work is the blending of issues of social justice and human rights with research and evaluation frameworks and methods.
 
She is currently the editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research with Max Bergman as co-editor. A past-president (1998) of the American Evaluation Association, she provided leadership for AEA’s Diversity Initiative and its resulting Graduate Internship for Evaluators of Color, as well as for the establishment of the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation.
 
She has authored/edited several books, including:
  • Indigenous and Post-Colonial Research (with Bagele Chilisa, Left Coast Press, in preparation)
  • Program Evaluation (in press, Guilford)
  • Research and Evaluation in Education and Psychology: Integrating Diversity with Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods (3rd ed., Sage, 2010)
  • Transformative Research and Evaluation (Guilford Press 2009)
  • Handbook of Social Research Ethics (with Pauline Ginsberg, co-editor, Sage 2009)
  • Research and Evaluation Methods in Special Education (Corwin, 2004, with John McLaughlin, co-author)
  • Parents and their Deaf Children: The Early Years (Gallaudet Press, 2003, with Kay Meadow Orlans and Marilyn Sass Lehrer, co-authors)
  • Research and Inequality (Taylor & Francis, 2000, with Carole Truman and Beth Humphries, co-editors)
 
Donna has also published in such journals as the American Journal of Evaluation, American Annals of the Deaf, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She has conducted international development and evaluation activities in Egypt, Costa Rica, Israel, South Africa, Niger, Brazil, and Peru.
For more information about Donna visit the Gallaudet University website.