Broadband, or high-speed internet, has been called the most important infrastructure challenge of the century. It has the potential to connect remote communities, streamline health care services, and support innovation across education, economics, and numerous other fields. Given the growing and widespread investments in broadband, how can citizens and policymakers determine whether the promise of broadband is being fulfilled?Transforming Everything? offers a comprehensive guide to the complexities and possibilities of broadband as a social technology. It addresses challenges for evaluating broadband initiatives across diverse contexts and proposes guidance and methods for evaluation for policymakers and researchers. Contributors draw on pioneering research in program evaluation and information technology to explore broadband applications in health, education, and civic engagement. They also address key measurement and evaluation challenges in the field today, including issues in privacy and security and inadequate research methods for target populations. Collectively, the chapters in this volume raise important questions for improving research and evaluation in broadband use and producing actionable evidence in a highly dynamic environment.Transforming Everything? prepares readers with a critical understanding of broadband technology and the necessary evidence to assess whether broadband programs and policy are truly empowering the communities they serve.

AcknowledgmentsEditorsContributorsIntroduction: Broadband as Experimentation and Policy LearningKaren Mossberger, Eric W. Welch, and Yonghong WuPART I Evaluation In the Context of Broadband1. The Changing Context for Broadband EvaluationWilliam LehrPART II Diverse Methods2. Measuring Broadband and Its ImpactsJohn B. Horrigan3. Using Random Experiments to Measure the Impact of Computers, the Internet, and Other Forms of Technology on Educational OutcomesRobert Fairlie4. Broadband Adoption and Ethnographic ApproachesJessica Crowell5. Addressing Spatial Inequality in Broadband Use and Community- Level OutcomesCaroline J. Tolbert, Karen Mossberger, Natasha Gaydos, and Mattia CaldaruloPART III Asking the Right Questions6. Broadband for Telemedicine and Health ServicesSharon Strover7. Opportunities and Challenges in Advancing Broadband- Enabled Government ServicesAlfred T. Ho8. Digital Media's Impact on Civic Engagement: Challenges and Opportunities for Evaluation Research on Broadband Technologies, Young People, and Citizen EngagementMichael A. XenosConclusion: Evaluation for the Broadband FutureEric W. Welch