Democratic Evaluation

Posted by on February 10, 2006

[posted from Promising Practices in After School listserv]

I thought you might be interested in the new issue of “The Evaluation Exchange,” now available on our website, which focuses on democratic evaluation. At the forefront of the discussion are equity and inclusion in the evaluation of programs for children, families, and communities, as well as evaluation to promote public accountability and transparency.

Katherine Ryan leads off the issue by presenting major theoretical approaches to democratic evaluation. Several contributors examine these different strands, highlighting the importance of power sharing. Jennifer Greene emphasizes the importance of broad inclusion of stakeholder perspectives in evaluations, while Saville Kushner offers guidelines for people and communities to help evaluation reposition itself as a collaborative effort and thereby begin to address the crisis in public trust between the professional bureaucracy and citizens. Kathleen McCartney and Heather Weiss focus on public accountability, especially the conduct of flagship evaluations to maintain their scientific integrity while also serving the public good.

Several contributors provide practical methods and tools to promote democratic evaluation, including the facilitation of dialogue, the training of youth researchers, the use of photovoice and cell phone technology, and access to interactive information through the Internet.

The issue is available on our website at:
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/eval/issue31