Uses and Objects of Evaluation
At this point, it might be useful to describe some of the ways in which evaluation can be used. An exhaustive list would be prohibitive, filling the rest of this book and more. Here we provide only a few representative examples of uses made of evaluation in selected sectors of society.
Examples of Evaluation Use in Education 1. To empower teachers to have more say in how school budgets are allocated 2. To judge the quality of school curricula in specific content areas 3. To accredit schools that meet or exceed minimum accreditation standards
Chapter 1 • Evaluation’s Basic Purpose, Uses, and Conceptual Distinctions 19
4. To determine the value of a middle school’s block scheduling 5. To satisfy an external funding agency’s demands for reports on effectiveness
of school programs it supports 6. To assist parents and students in selecting schools in a district with school
choice 7. To help teachers improve their reading program to encourage more volun-
tary reading
Examples of Evaluation Use in Other Public and Nonprofit Sectors 1. To decide whether to expand an urban transit program and where it should
be expanded 2. To establish the value of a job training program 3. To decide whether to modify a low-cost housing project’s rental policies 4. To improve a recruitment program for blood donors 5. To determine the impact of a prison’s early-release program on recidivism 6. To gauge community reaction to proposed fire-burning restrictions to im-
prove air quality 7. To determine the effect of an outreach program on the immunization of in-
fants and children
Examples of Evaluation Use in Business and Industry 1. To improve a commercial product 2. To judge the effectiveness of a corporate training program on teamwork 3. To determine the effect of a new flextime policy on productivity, recruitment,
and retention 4. To identify the contributions of specific programs to corporate profits 5. To determine the public’s perception of a corporation’s environmental image 6. To recommend ways to improve retention among younger employees 7. To study the quality of performance appraisal feedback
One additional comment about the use of evaluation in business and indus- try may be warranted. Evaluators unfamiliar with the private sector are sometimes unaware that personnel evaluation is not the only use made of evaluation in business and industry settings. Perhaps that is because the term “evaluation” has been absent from the descriptors for many corporate activities and programs that, when examined, are decidedly evaluative. Activities labeled as quality assurance, quality control, research and development, Total Quality Management (TQM), or Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) turn out, on closer inspection, to possess many characteristics of program evaluation.
Uses of Evaluation Are Generally Applicable
As should be obvious by now, evaluation methods are clearly portable from one arena to another. The use of evaluation may remain constant, but the entity it is ap- plied to—that is, the object of the evaluation—may vary widely. Thus, evaluation
20 Part I • Introduction to Evaluation
may be used to improve a commercial product, a community training program, or a school district’s student assessment system. It could be used to build organizational capacity in the Xerox Corporation, the E. F. Lilly Foundation, the Minnesota Department of Education, or the Utah Division of Family Services. Evaluation can be used to empower parents in the San Juan County Migrant Education Program, workers in the U.S. Postal Service, employees of Barclays Bank of England, or residents in east Los Angeles. Evaluation can be used to provide information for decisions about programs in vocational education centers, community mental health clinics, university medical schools, or county cooperative extension offices. Such examples could be multiplied ad infinitum, but these should suffice to make our point.
In some instances, so many evaluations are conducted of the same type of object that it prompts suggestions for techniques found to be particularly helpful in evalu- ating something of that particular type. An example would be Kirkpatrick’s (1977; 1983; 2006) model for evaluating training efforts. In several areas, concern about how to evaluate broad categories of objects effectively has led to the development of various subareas within the field of evaluation, such as product evaluation, personnel evaluation, program evaluation, policy evaluation, and performance evaluation.