The concept of values is the central concept in evaluation. There are several ways of looking at values, including from the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, and biography. In this article Ernest House discusses how values are conceived in cognitive psychology and what that means for evaluation. Further, he discusses the…

Evaluation is an act of persuasion directed to a specific audience concerning the solution of a problem. The process of evaluation is prescribed by the nature of knowledge--which is generally complex, always uncertain (in varying degrees), and not always propositional--and by the nature of logic, which is always selective. In the process of…