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Session Title: Evaluation Anthropology Praxis Today: A Five Year Retrospective
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Panel Session 662 to be held in Lone Star A on Friday, Nov 12, 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
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Sponsored by the Presidential Strand
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| Chair(s): |
| Jacqueline Copeland-Carson, Copeland Carson & Associates, jcc@copelandcarson.net
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| Discussant(s):
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| David Fetterman, Fetterman & Associates, fettermanassociates@gmail.com
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| Rodney Hopson, Duquesne University, hopson@duq.edu
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| Abstract:
Evaluation Anthropology Praxis: Charting a New Future
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Ethnography and Mental Health Consumers
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| Charity Goodman, United States Department of Health and Human Services, charity.goodman@samhsa.hhs.gov
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The mission of the Center for Mental Health Service, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services in the US Department of Health and Human Services is to promote effective mental health services in every community, including the Center itself. The research will measure the extent to which consumer issues are represented in our internal activities and co-worker attitudes. What is the role of ethnography in examining workplace culture and how can culture change be promoted? Our methodology is in-depth ethnographic interviews and a written survey instrument to measure culture change. As part of this evaluation, we will collect information on how comfortable staff may feel in disclosing their experiences with the mental health system to co-workers and or supervisors. Also, the paper will explore how mental health consumers and ethnography are linked as well as how anthropology can enhance the quality of evaluation research.
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What Evaluation Anthropologists Bring to the Party: A Systems Approach to Context
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| Michael D Lieber, University of Illinois at Chicago, mdlieber@uic.edu
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| Eve Pinsker, University of Illinois at Chicago, epinsker@uic.edu
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Sponsors of social interventions now increasingly recognize that complex human problems need solutions that affect multiple organizational levels (individual, institutional, community) and hence have been calling on evaluators to assess “system change.” Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, anthropologists and systems theorists, developed powerful concepts for addressing systems and system change in relation to social problems, including ways of analyzing pattern, context, meaning, and what complexity theorists now call “emergence.” The context of any action or utterance is the relationship between the interacting parties, which is shaped by the pattern of messages that they exchange. The assumptions underlying these patterns are what anthropologists conceptualize as “culture.” Ethnographic methods target data that facilitate the analysis of context. One example of practical application of these concepts is the evaluation of coalition-building as a change strategy in community health projects, addressing the question: “How do we know when a coalition has produced system change?”
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Making Evaluation Real: Incorporating Praxis Into Graduate Study of Evaluation Anthropology
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| Mary Odell Butler, University of Maryland, maryobutler@verizon.net
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Evaluation anthropology tends to focus on approaches such as utilization focused evaluation, participatory evaluation and empowerment evaluation that incorporate stakeholders in the design of evaluation questions, the implementation of data collection and the analysis of evaluation results. Completion of such evaluations, even on a small scale, is not often feasible within a one-semester course because of the need to bring stakeholders into the evaluation design and to consult with them regularly through out the evaluation, along with the lengthy process of ethnographic interviewing and analysis. This paper deals with the use of problem-based learning and case study approaches drawn from evaluation pedagogy to support the practical learning of ethnographically based evaluation. An example of a learning scenario will be presented and its usefulness critiqued.
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