| Roundtable: Ethnographic Evaluation: A Realistic Choice or a Contradiction in Terms? |
| Roundtable Presentation 672 to be held in Exec. Board Room on Friday, Nov 4, 1:35 PM to 2:20 PM |
| Sponsored by the Qualitative Methods TIG |
| Presenter(s): |
| MaryLynn Quartaroli, Northern Arizona University, marylynn.quartaroli@nau.edu |
| Frances Julia Riemer, Northern Arizona University, frances.riemer@nau.edu |
| Abstract: Evaluation is an act of determining the value or worth of programs, personnel, products, materials, and/or policies. The selection of a particular methodology ultimately reflects the values of the evaluators, the stakeholders, and the audiences of our work. An evaluator with an intuitionist/pluralist perspective seeks the widest representation of values from diverse populations. One methodological option is ethnography. A fundamental question is whether ethnography is appropriate for conducting evaluations. Doing ethnographic evaluation is more than selecting particular ethnographic data collection methods from a cafeteria of choices and applying these to evaluation projects. It requires evaluators to spend significant amounts of time interacting with all stakeholders in order to fully understand a program from both emic (insider) and etic (outsider) perspectives. Only through this process can diverse values be uncovered. The session will provide examples of successful ethnographic evaluation projects in Botswana, Nicaragua, and the United States. |