1990–The Present: History and Current Trends
Today, evaluations are conducted in many different settings using a variety of approaches and methods. Evaluation is well established as a profession and is, as LaVelle and Donaldson remark, “growing in leaps and bounds” in recent years (2010, p. 9). Many jobs are available. Although many evaluators continue to come to the profession from other disciplines, the number of university-based evaluation training programs in the United States grew from 38 in 1994 to 48 in 2008 (LaVelle and Donaldson, 2010). Al- most 6,000 people belong to the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and another 1,800 belong to the Canadian Evaluation Society (CES). In 2005, the CES and AEA sponsored a joint conference in Toronto that attracted 2,300 evaluators, including many members and attendees from other countries. Policymakers and managers in government and nonprofit settings know of, and often request or require, evaluations. For many, evaluation—funding it, managing it, or conducting it—is one of their responsibilities. So, evaluators, at least those in the United States and Canada, are no longer struggling with establishing their discipline. But in the years since 1990, evaluation has faced several important changes that influence its practice today.
Spread of Evaluation to Other Countries
Evaluation has grown rapidly in other countries in recent years. This internation- alization of evaluation has influenced the practice of evaluation as evaluators adapt to the context of their country and the expectations and needs of stakeholders. Today, there are more than 75 regional and national evaluation associations around the world (Preskill, 2008). Major associations include the European Evaluation Soci- ety, the Australasian Evaluation Society, the United Kingdom Evaluation Society,
50 Part I • Introduction to Evaluation
and the African Evaluation Association. The International Organization for Coop- eration in Evaluation (IOCE) was created in 2003 by its 24 members of national or regional evaluation associations, with a mission to “help legitimate and support evaluation associations, societies, and networks so that they can better contribute to good governance, effective decision making, and strengthening the role of civil society” (IOCE, 2003, para 3).
As noted earlier in this chapter, Ray Rist and his colleagues identified the United States, Canada, Germany, and Sweden as countries in the “first wave” of modern evaluation that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s during a period of social experimentation. Evaluation in these first-wave countries was linked to that social experimentation and to program improvement (Rist, 1990). Rist and his colleagues identified a “second wave” of European countries where evaluation started in a different context.3 In these second-wave countries, which included the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, and France, evaluation began as an effort to control federal budgets and reduce government spending. The focus of evaluation was more on accountability and identifying unproductive programs than on social experimentation and program improvement. Given its purposes, evaluation in these second-wave countries was often housed centrally, near those who made decisions regarding budgets and priorities. Rist and his col- leagues found that the initial impetus for evaluation in a country often had a strong influence on the subsequent conduct and purposes of evaluation in that country. A more recent evaluation influence in Europe has been the European Union and the evaluation mandates of the European Commission. For many countries in Eastern Europe, responding to these evaluation mandates is their first venture into evaluation.
Evaluation in different cultures and other countries is an exciting venture, not only because evaluation can be beneficial in helping address policy questions and issues in those countries, but also because North American evaluators can learn new methods and organizational approaches from the efforts of those in other countries (Mertens, 1999). As any traveler knows, seeing and experiencing a cul- ture different from one’s own is an eye-opener to the peculiarities—both strengths and constraints—of one’s own culture. Practices or mores that had not been previously questioned are brought to our attention as we observe people or insti- tutions in other cultures behaving differently. Citizens differ in their expectations and beliefs regarding their government, its actions, and what they want and expect to know about their government.4 Ways in which programs are judged, feedback
3The research of Rist and his colleagues focused only on Europe, Canada, and the United States. 4For example, a French evaluator, when interviewed by Fitzpatrick, commented that the mistrust that Americans have of their government creates a fertile ground for evaluation because citizens want to know what the government is doing and what mistakes it is making. He felt French citizens lacked that suspi- cion of government actions and, hence, were less interested in evaluation. Patton, in the interview cited at the end of the chapter, comments on cultural differences between Japan and the United States that had implications for evaluation. In his work in Japan, he observed that blaming or calling attention to mistakes is avoided and, thus, evaluation findings would be handled differently than in the United States.
Chapter 2 • Origins and Current Trends in Modern Program Evaluation 51
is given, or participation is sought differ across cultures and countries. These dif- ferences, of course, have implications for evaluators who must pay attention to the political and cultural context of the evaluation in order to plan and implement a study that will be trusted and used. We believe the twenty-first century will be a time for evaluators in the Western world to learn from the practices of their col- leagues in other countries and that these efforts will both strengthen our own work and spread the culture of evaluation—collecting data to judge programs and form decisions—around the world.