The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
Volume I, Number 3&4, Fall 1995
Issue Topic: Participatory Evaluation
New & Noteworthy
Fetterman, D., Kaftarian, S., & Wandersman, A. (Eds.). (1995). Empowerment evaluation: Knowledge and tools for self-assessment and accountability. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Empowerment evaluation is explicitly designed to foster the self-determination of traditionally disenfranchised groups by utilizing evaluation to help achieve their goals and objectives. As such, empowerment evaluation is problem-focused, collaborative, and flexible, and has been applied to the evaluation of an array of programs and settings, such as substance abuse prevention, battered women's shelters, community coalitions, and school reform. This valuable edited volume provides the foundations of empowerment evaluation by outlining its philosophy, theoretical frameworks, useful tools, basic steps, and lessons learned. Case examples are drawn from government, foundations, and academe.
Durning, D. (1993). Participatory policy analysis in a social service agency: A case study. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 12(2), 297-322. Participatory policy analysis has developed in response to two major criticisms of traditional policy analysis: that it embodies an antidemocratic philosophy and that it utilizes a positivist framework that misdirects the analytic task of policy analysts. The author first identifies four types of participatory policy analysis, all of which accept an interpretive paradigm of inquiry, but differ in terms of the particular purposes and strategies of this approach. Next, the article presents a case study of participatory policy analysis, in which a team of employees of the Georgia Division of Rehabilitation Services examines the efficacy of its service delivery strategy.
Zacharakis-Jutz, J., & Gajenayake, S. (1994, July/August). Participatory evaluation's potential among nonprofit organizations: The Rockford, Illinois project. Adult Learning. In 1991 United Way of Rock River Valley in Rockford, Illinois decided to encourage member organizations to implement participatory evaluation strategies. This short article profiles the efforts of the United Way and the 10 member agencies that volunteered to conduct participatory evaluations and points to both the promises and challenges inherent in this approach to evaluation.
Bhatnagar, B., & Williams, A. C. (Eds.). (1992). Participatory development and the World Bank: Potential directions for change, World Bank discussion paper 183. Washington, DC: The World Bank. This working paper contains papers and succinct summaries of discussions from an international conference held to examine the wealth of experience with and future potential of participatory development strategies. Defining participatory development as a powerful way to build skills and enhance people's capacity for action in order to create better development policies, the conference used five different agencies' experiences to stimulate discussion about this approach. Norman Uphoff's excellent paper focuses directly on crafting evaluation approaches that build ongoing learning and participatory management capacity and contribute to long-term project maintenance.