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Session Title: The Future of Ethics in Program Evaluation
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Panel Session 205 to be held in Capitol Ballroom Section 4 on Thursday, Nov 6, 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM
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Sponsored by the AEA Conference Committee
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| Chair(s): |
| Donna Mertens,
Gallaudet University,
donna.mertens@gallaudet.edu
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| Discussant(s):
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| Michael Quinn Patton,
Utilization Focused Evaluation,
mqpatton@prodigy.net
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| Abstract:
Program evaluators work in dynamic, complex systems - often with the need to make decisions about challenging ethical dilemmas not specifically addressed in AEA's Guiding Principles or in an organization's policy statements about evaluation. Hence, the importance of critical reflection on such issues, not only as they have been experienced in past evaluations, but also with an eye to implications for the future. Based on contributors to the forthcoming Handbook of Social Research Ethics, the panel includes: Kate Toms who contrasts the perspectives of American and Australasian evaluators on the topic of ethics to reveal issues of import that demand more thought. Ken Howe and Heather MacGillivary wrestle with the ethical issues that emerge as evaluators struggle to tie their work to the policy arena. Pauline Ginsberg and Donna M. Mertens bring together ethical issues embedded in power differentials in program evaluation as they relate to increased attention to cultural competency, beneficence, reciprocity, and confidentiality.
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Ethical Perspectives in Evaluation: A Contract Not Fully Negotiated
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| Kathleen Toms,
Research Works Inc,
katytoms@researchworks.org
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| Amanda Wolf,
Victoria University of Wellington,
amanda.wolf@vuw.ac.nz
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| David Turner,
New Zealand Ministry of Justice,
adturner@xtra.co.nz
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This presentation will discuss the ethics of evaluation as a profession, and ethics of evaluation as professional ethics. Evaluators display fundamental characteristics of professional practice, they think, function, and learn across a series of 'new' instances; blend together experience, knowledge, and a certain disposition or 'feel' in their work; and, provide a service to society. When compared to the ethical codes of other professions, the existing evaluation standards and codes of practice are more minimum competencies than codes of professional ethics. Professional ethics concerns the moral issues that arise when individuals draw on specialist knowledge to provide services to the public. It follows that evaluation has its own unique ethical considerations because the 'rightness' of professional practices and societal consequences is central to evaluation's 'social contract', a contract not yet completely negotiated. While evaluators are limited in how they ethically justify their decisions, it remains open to question the manner in which professional norms contain emerging ethical perspectives.
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The Ethics and Implications of Deliberative Democratic Social Research
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| Kenneth Howe,
University of Colorado Boulder,
ken.howe@colorado.edu
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| Heather MacGillivary,
University of Colorado Boulder,
heather.macgillivary@colorado.edu
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Evaluation research that incorporates the principles of deliberative democracy creates unique ethical and practical challenges. These challenges are often amplified when evaluators try to connect results to important policy decisions. Howe and MacGillivary will revisit three central political-cum-methodological principles of democratic deliberative social research: inclusion, dialogue and deliberation. Howe will discuss how media coverage, stakeholder polarization and limited resources impacted deliberative democracy in two educational policy evaluations concerning school choice and bilingual education. MacGillivary will describe a participatory democratic evaluation of supported housing services for people with chronic psychiatric disabilities. Specifically, MacGillivary's example will describe how to establish a credible deliberation with oppressed groups. Three implications from these examples will be discussed; the distinction between participatory and deliberative democratic research, the detriments of resurgent 'experimentism', and the deleterious impacts of doggedly self-interested, dominant groups.
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Exploring the Frontiers of Evaluation Ethics
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| Pauline E Ginsberg,
Utica College,
pginsbe@utica.edu
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| Donna Mertens,
Gallaudet University,
donna.mertens@gallaudet.edu
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The forthcoming (Sept., 2008) Handbook of Social Research Ethics draws from many disciplines, many paradigms, many evaluation topics, many methods and many cultures. As a result, there is great diversity among its contributors regarding site-specific dilemmas that are likely to arise and means by which these might be negotiated. There is also a central core of issues that cross disciplines, paradigms, cultures, methodologies, and topics. These may be roughly divided into three categories: redefining familiar terminology, power relations, and the evaluator's role as information provider v. advocate. Familiar terms include respect, confidentiality and informed consent. Power relations involve evaluator/gatekeeper, evaluator/funder, evaluator/community, evaluator/agency or institution, and evaluator/participant linkages. Finally, the evaluator's role as information provider v. that of advocate is the most knotty one for evaluators, intertwined of necessity with the evaluator's ordinary moral sense, the specific evaluation contract, and professional future.
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