Practicing Evaluation: A Collaborative Approach - Tapa dura

“Rita grounds her collaborative work in the American Evaluation Association’s Guiding Principles, situates it within its Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation Topical Interest Group, and discusses it within the confines of the evaluation literature. Sounds like sound evaluation to me.” (David Fetterman)

Collaborative evaluation is an approach that actively engages program stakeholders in the evaluation process. When stakeholders collaborate with evaluators, their understanding increases and the utility of the evaluation is often enhanced. Collaborative evaluation has been used in a variety of program settings, including education, extension, family support, health, and non-profit organizations. This book contains strategies and techniques for conducting successful collaborative evaluations.

While most evaluation textbooks cover the theory and steps of an evaluation, they often do not include specifics regarding how to put these concepts into actual practice when you are in a real-world setting, such as a school district or business. Using actual cases from educational, health-related, and business settings, the author shows readers how to do evaluation using a collaborative approach - an approach which actually involves stakeholders in the evaluation process.

- The text dedicates a chapter to how to design program evaluations with a collaborative approach.

- Checklists within the chapters and end-of-chapter exercises give readers the opportunity to put what they've learned into practice immediately.

- Boxed examples provide snapshots of other evaluations and highlight effective evaluation techniques and collaborative evaluation practices.

- Case studies from three different settings (education, health, and business) are detailed throughout the book.

- The book includes excerpts from the two most widely cited sources covering professional ethical standards (AEA's Guidelines for Professional Practice and the Joint Committee Standards for Educational Program Evaluation).