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'Credible' Judgment in Program Evaluation
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| Presenter(s):
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| Marthe Hurteau, Université du Québec à Montréal, hurteau.marthe@uqam.ca
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| Sylvain Houle, Université du Québec à Montréal, houle.sylvain@uqam.ca
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| Abstract:
Through the scientific process, researchers generate findings which must convince peers of their validity, reliability and acceptability (Ginnell, 2009).Transposed it to the context of program evaluation, would not the process imply that evaluators provide evidence and generate judgments that convince the stakeholders? The present research aims at exploring, depending on the context, what constitutes a credible judgment and what are the conditions required to reach it, In order to do so, in-depth interviews were conducted with 6 subjects (3 experienced evaluators and 3 "evaluation clients"). After transcribing the interviews, the QDA Miner was used to encode and analyze the produced data. Among many things, findings raises the absence of modalities to mix the information in an adequate manner in order to generate a solid argumentation that will eventually support an evaluative judgment. Impacts of the study on the evaluative practice, as well as prospects for further research will be presented.
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Evaluation Inquiry and the Discourse of Practice
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| Presenter(s):
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| William Rickards, Alverno College, william.rickards@alverno.edu
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| Abstract:
The role of communicating results and reporting to stakeholders holds a significant place across a range of evaluation's theoretical perspectives and approaches, from experimental designs to deliberative democratic, participatory, and mixed methods to program theories, just as in AEA's Guiding Principles. Given this, it is critical to understand how individual communities of users and stakeholders interact in relation to evaluation evidence. The structures and norms of these conversations constitute a discourse of practice with potential to shape evaluation theories, approaches, data analysis, reporting and meaning-making processes. This discourse can also become a medium for understanding the effects of interventions in select communities (e.g., how do complex interventions affect the conversations through which practitioners, such as teachers or probation officers, accomplish their work?). This presentation examines the discourse of practice as a key consideration in conceptualizing evaluations, designing processes for taking up evaluation findings, and ethical considerations for evaluators.
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