Drug studies are often cited as the best exemplars of evaluation design. However, many of these studies are seriously biased in favor of positive findings for the drugs evaluated, even to the point where dangerous effects are hidden. In spite of using randomized designs and double blinding, drug companies have found ways of producing the results…

Discusses the nature of stakeholder participation in evaluation and contrasts E. House's commitment to involving all stakeholders to ensure that interests of all are included with other theorists' preference to involve a few stakeholders more intensely. (SLD)

Highlights the important contributions of responsive evaluation's orientation to local issues and qualitative methods, but rejects responsive evaluation's relativity in favor of deliberation as a vehicle for adjudicating among competing evaluative claims. The great strength of responsive evaluation is that it helped break the intellectual…

Presents a framework for judging evaluations on the basis of their potential for democratic deliberation that includes the interrelated requirements of inclusion, dialogue, and deliberation. Operationalizes these requirements in 10 questions to guide evaluation and meta-evaluation from a democratic viewpoint. (SLD)

Our scientific conceptions of evaluation are strongly influenced by underlying, deep-seated metaphors. This analysis draws upon recent philosophic work concerning the role of metaphors in all thought processes. (Author/PN)

Explores two issues that have strongly influenced much of what has happened in evaluation in recent decades. The quantitative-qualitative debate has been fueled by changes in theories of causation. The second issue, that of the fact-value dichotomy, can be dealt with through the realization that facts and values are not separate kinds of entities,…

Analyzed are some of the political problems encountered in conducting evaluations in higher education. An operational university evaluation system which minimizes some of these problems is cited. (Editor)

Chelimsky, former head of the Program Evaluation and Methodology Division of the General Accounting Office, suggested that advocacy by evaluators destroys their credibility. Evaluators should, this author argues, be advocates for democracy and the public interest, with the question being how explicitly and how defensibly. (SLD)

Outlines problems with the U. S. Office of Education sponsored report on Project Follow Through. The problems are in the areas of classification of models, measurement techniques, methods of analysis, and fairness. (Author/IRT)

Author believes that it is not a rejection of technology that we seek but a new, better technology - better responsive to our personal beings. (Author)

The thesis of this paper is that the humanistic mode of inquiry is underemployed in evaluation studies and the future evaluation of Follow Through could profitably use humanistic approaches. The original Follow Through evaluation was based on the assumption that the world consists of a single system explainable by appropriate methods; the…

The large government market in evaluation that has developed in recent years does not follow the idealized image of open markets because of the contracting process, which means that a few firms conduct most evaluations. To produce honest, unbiased evaluations, evaluation ethics must take government market factors into consideration. (SLD)

Discusses the inappropriate racial categorizations of minorities that have routinely infected evaluations and social research. By adhering to principles of democracy and including minorities as participants in dialogue, evaluators can avoid such damaging effects in their work. (Author/SLD)

The evaluators of Push/Excel assumed that it was a systematically developed program with measurable outcomes, not a charismatically inspired movement whose effects would be hard to pin down. As a result, neither the program nor the evaluation approach used were adequately tested. (Author)

Different approaches to evaluation are described: systems analysis, behavioral objectives, professional review, and case study. For an evaluation system to operate, it must be perceived as being fair; the legitimacy of evaluation is dependent on the issue of fairness. (MLW)