| Roundtable: Toward a Model of Sustainable Evaluation: A Focus on Developing Contexts |
| Roundtable Presentation 359 to be held in Suwannee 19 on Thursday, Nov 12, 3:35 PM to 4:20 PM |
| Sponsored by the Research on Evaluation TIG |
| Presenter(s): |
| Mark Constas, Cornell University, mac223@cornell.edu |
| Lesli Hoe, Cornell University, lmh46@cornell.edu |
| Abstract: Sustainability is typically related to environmental concerns and to the stresses wrought by increasing world populations. Sustainability has also been applied to the degree to which programs themselves are sustainable. While the increased interest in sustainability has been paralleled by an interest in how to evaluate for sustainability, less attention has been given to idea of what makes a set of evaluation practices sustainable. The present paper offers a model of sustainable evaluation by exploring two questions: 1) What are the key components that would sustain the continued use of evaluation practices across a range of conditions, over extended periods of time? and 2) How might the integration of such components be modeled to provide a framework of guiding principles for sustainable evaluation? The guidelines proposed in the paper demonstrate how economic imperatives, organizational structures, socio-cultural factors, and political conditions may be integrated with the design features of program evaluation. |