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What Is Evaluation Document

Evaluation is a systematic process to determine the merit, worth or value of something. There are different types of evaluations including program, product, policy and personnel evaluations. Evaluations are used in various ways like monitoring progress, improving programs, and informing decisions. Evaluators come from diverse backgrounds and use methods from different disciplines to conduct relevant and rigorous evaluations.

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37 views

What Is Evaluation Document

Evaluation is a systematic process to determine the merit, worth or value of something. There are different types of evaluations including program, product, policy and personnel evaluations. Evaluations are used in various ways like monitoring progress, improving programs, and informing decisions. Evaluators come from diverse backgrounds and use methods from different disciplines to conduct relevant and rigorous evaluations.

Uploaded by

naseerimran071
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is evaluation?

Evaluation is a systematic process to determine merit, worth, value or significance. So


what does that mean in practice? Let’s use one kind of evaluation, program evaluation,
to illustrate. Programs and projects of all kinds aspire to make the world a better place.
Program evaluation answers questions like: To what extent does the program achieve its
goals? How can it be improved? Should it continue? Are the results worth what the
program costs? Program evaluators gather and analyze data about what programs are
doing and accomplishing to answer these kinds of questions.

A program evaluation has to be designed to be appropriate for the specific program being
evaluated. Health programs aim to make people healthier and prevent disease. School
programs strive to increase student learning. Employment training programs try to
help the unemployed get jobs. Homelessness initiatives work to get people off the streets
and into safe housing. Chemical dependency programs help people using alcohol and
drugs. Community development programs plan initiatives to increase prosperity among
those in poverty. Juvenile diversion programs try to keep kids out of jail and put them on
a path to becoming productive adults. For each kind of program, an evaluation would
gather and analyze data about that program’s effectiveness. But program evaluation is
only one kind of evaluation.

What are the different kinds of evaluation?

All of us have conducted some sort of evaluation, whether formally or not. We do it


almost every day when we decide what to wear or how to prioritize the various tasks that
lay before us. A more specific example is when it comes to purchasing expensive items
such as a car or home. We tend to weigh various criteria in order to make a decision, for
example, price, location, number of rooms in the case of a house or miles per gallon and
safety features in a car. That’s evaluation. The evaluation profession has developed
systematic methods and approaches that can be used to inform judgments and decisions.
Because making judgments and decisions is involved in everything people do, evaluation
is important in every discipline, field, profession and sector, including government,
businesses, and not-for-profit organizations.

Different types of evaluation include product evaluation, program evaluation, policy


evaluation, and personnel evaluation. Personnel evaluations aim to make people more
effective. Product evaluations help inform consumer decisions. Policy evaluation helps
policy makers judge the effectiveness and consequences of specific policies. So, there are
many different types of evaluation depending on the purpose of the evaluation and what
is being evaluated. Program evaluations, as illustrated earlier, can improve program
effectiveness, efficiency, and results. Examples of different kinds of evaluation questions
include:
 What is the quality of program or policy implementation?
 What outcomes are being achieved?
 Are the real needs of people being met?
 What works for different people in what ways and under what conditions?
 How do cultural and diversity variations affect what is done and achieved?
 What are the costs and benefits of a program, policy, product, or training effort
for personnel evaluation?
 What unintended consequences or negative side effects are appearing that need to
be addressed?
 What are key success factors that others can learn from and use?

These are just a few of the many kinds of evaluation questions that can be asked – and
answered with evaluation information and data.

How are evaluations used?

Evaluations are used in different ways depending on the primary purposes for the
evaluation. Evaluations can be used to monitor how an effort is progressing, like tracking
implementation of a vaccination campaign. Sometimes evaluations improve a program by
getting and using feedback from participants in the program, like a professional
development course or parent education program. Evaluation can contribute to
formulating a new policy or designing a program by finding out from diverse people in a
community what their needs and concerns are. Evaluation used for accountability ensures
that funds have been properly and spent to accomplish expected outcomes, like ensuring
that a recycling campaign accomplishes targeted reductions in waste. Decision makers
can use evaluation findings to inform a major decision about whether to continue,
expand, or end a program, like whether to continue an innovative community policing
project. And evaluations are used to learn lessons about what works and doesn’t work,
like identifying key success factors in a campaign to get high school students to stop
smoking. Evaluations can also capture and report the diverse experiences and perceptions
of people with different backgrounds, those who share a particular culture, people with
disabilities, and the poor and disadvantaged. Evaluators have developed special
approaches to ensure that the experiences and views of diverse groups are included in
evaluation findings.

Evaluation’s Value and Benefits

Governments, businesses, not-for-profit agencies, philanthropic foundations, and


international organizations around the world use evaluation evidence to find out what is
and is not effective. This helps them make decisions about how best to allocate scarce
resources, develop staff, choose quality products they need, and more effectively meet
people’s needs. Independent evaluations can increase public confidence that they are
getting credible information about how funds are being spent, what is being
accomplished, and what is not being accomplished. Culturally-sensitive evaluations
ensure that different points of view and diverse experiences are communicated and taken
into account. Evaluations help funders determine if the money they’ve provided has been
well spent to accomplish what they intended. Participatory evaluations help people in
programs and communities reflect together on how programs and policies affect them,
and more effectively communicate their findings to improve services they receive.
Ethical evaluations ensure that people are treated fairly when data are gathered and
reported. In all of these cases, the value and utility of an evaluation is increased when
evidence is gathered systematically and ethically, appropriate and relevant data are
collected, the analysis is genuinely fair and balanced, and the evaluation includes diverse
perspectives so that the findings are credible. Credibility is essential for utility.

The benefits of evaluation extend beyond a particular project when the findings are used
to expand the project to a larger number of communities. For example, positive findings
from a pilot program can be used to support dissemination and expansion of the program,
as when a pilot parent education program becomes a national model based on evaluation
of its effectiveness. Worldwide, evaluations are used by governments, nongovernmental
organizations, and international agencies to enhance the impacts of development aid. The
basic value and underlying theme of these many different kinds of evaluation, in widely
diverse places, is assessing whether people’s lives are getting better.

Who Does Evaluation?

Evaluators come from diverse backgrounds, bringing to the profession a wide variety of
experiences, training and skills, as well as diverse cultural, ethnic, and community
backgrounds. You’ll find evaluators representing the full range of disciplines and
professions such as sociology, political science, economics, psychology,
communications, management, information technology, health sciences, education,
organizational development, and natural sciences, among others. Evaluators draw on the
methods and theories of these diverse disciplines and professions to design and conduct
appropriately relevant and rigorous evaluations.

Evaluators may work within an organization (internal evaluators) or be commissioned


under contract (external evaluators). Some evaluators are affiliated with a consulting firm
while others are independent consultants. Some work in nonprofit or governmental
organizations, and others work in academic or research settings. Some work in private
industry, such as quality assurance specialists in businesses and hospitals. They often
have a graduate degree, either a masters or a doctorate, but some do not.

Currently, there is no official licensing body for evaluators. Therefore, some people in the
evaluation field might not necessarily have the appropriate training and experience.
Organizations are encouraged to always check the credentials of the evaluators they are
planning to engage to assure that they have the appropriate methodological skills, cultural
competence, specialized knowledge, and professional training to competently and
credibly conduct the evaluation in accordance with the standards and principles of the
evaluation profession.
What is the American Evaluation Association?

Many professional evaluators are members of the American Evaluation Association.

The American Evaluation Association is an international professional association of


evaluators devoted to the professional practice of high quality evaluations of all kinds.
AEA has approximately 6,000 members representing all 50 states in the US as well as
over 60 foreign countries.

MISSION: The American Evaluation Association’s mission is to improve evaluation


practices and methods, increase evaluation use, promote evaluation as a profession, and
support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about
effective human action.

VISION: The American Evaluation Association’s vision is to foster an inclusive,


diverse, and international community of practice positioned as a respected source of
information for and about the field of evaluation.

VALUES: The American Evaluation Association values excellence in evaluation


practice, utilization of evaluation findings, and inclusion and diversity in the evaluation
community.

AEA offers a series of Guiding Principles for evaluators. The Principles describe agreed-
upon criteria of excellence. AEA has also endorsed standards for the profession. See:
http://www.eval.org/Publications/GuidingPrinciples.asp

Note about this statement.

This statement was developed by an AEA Task Force commissioned by the AEA Board to
“define and communicate the value of evaluation to the media, the public, and other
audiences as well as be used comfortably by evaluators throughout the field without
regard for specialty or area of expertise.” The Task Force was comprised of both long-
time evaluation professionals and AEA members newer to the profession. All have
experience and expertise in communicating to others about evaluation. The task force
included:

Michael Quinn Patton, Chair


Edith Asibey
Jara Dean-Coffey
Robin Kelley
Roger Miranda
Susan Parker
Gwen Fariss Newman, AEA staff

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