While evaluators have considered accountability pressures and examined the consequences of performance measurement for organizations, they have paid less attention to the accountability relationship in which their work is used. Drawing on theoretical literature and empirical data, this article shows how these accountability relationships drive the use of evaluative frameworks, like performance …
This article focuses on negotiation and discusses its relevance for evaluators. Given the impetus for participatory evaluation, evaluators would benefit from improving skills that enable them to make collaborative decisions and work alongside stakeholders, in particular in community evaluations. Negotiation skills are explored through post hoc reflection of a Sure Start programme evaluation in …
The realist evaluation (RE) approach is a promising contribution to the literature on theory-driven evaluation.Thus far, RE has mainly been applied to the evaluation of human service programmes, but the aim of this article is to investigate if it can be extended to large-scale public sector reforms, in casu: the reform of the electricity market in Denmark. Five areas of regulation under the ref…
Partnerships are often considered an alternative way to deliver programs provided by governments and organizations (potentially) more cost effectively. However, this assumption needs to be verified. Evaluators and auditors now face a challenge: how to assess the performance of this hybrid organizational form.This article suggests one powerful way of evaluating partnerships: transaction cost eco…
This article argues that complexity theory has the potential to bring important insights in reframing of the role and practice of evaluation but that the utility of complexity theory needs to be developed to support its application in evaluation research.This article focuses on the implications of a reformed relationship between theory and the empirical setting for what we can learn in evaluati…
Advocacy has become an important area of development support. Simultaneously, the interest in learning-oriented monitoring of advocacy programmes has increased. Starting from the premise that learning has sociopolitical dimensions, this article explores how the challenges and contradictions of such monitoring present themselves in Latin American advocacy activities supported by a Danish NGO…
Based on our experience in helping design, implement, and evaluate a non-evidence-based program, we explore a non-conventional fidelity and adaptation relationship and its implications for program evaluation.We find that in non-evidence-based interventions, program fidelity and adaptation may not be competitors but serve to complement each other.This non-conventional relationship leads to ex…
Ever increasing demands are being made on welfare organizations to display efficiency. Evaluation workshops constitute a form of learning for the purposes of building up competence to conduct evaluations within welfare organizations, with the support of research and development units. In workshops of this kind, welfare work professionals meet in order to conduct evaluations together with resear…
This contribution portrays the institutionalization and practice of evaluation in Switzerland.The main actors and patterns of evaluation development patterns differ from those presented so far in relation to other countries. This raises questions regarding the relevance of the theories previously advanced.The entry points of evaluation into the political process are described.As suggested by ot…
Recent developments in innovation theory and policy have led policy makers to assign particular importance to supporting networks of cooperation among heterogeneous economic actors, especially in production systems composed of small and medium enterprises. Such innovative policies call for parallel innovations in policy analysis, monitoring and assessment. Our analysis of a policy experiment ai…
This article is a case study of the emergence of an evaluation culture in the public sector and particularly in education in Ireland. It suggests that the emergence of this culture was strongly influenced by external bodies, particularly the EU and, to a lesser but significant degree, the OECD. It is further argued that the continuation of systematic evaluation is still dependent on external fo…
Evidence-based evaluation of adult learning (training and capacity development) programs is essential for guiding investment decisions regarding such programs. But standard practice for evaluation of training and development programs relies on participants' self-reports regarding the quality, effectiveness, and impact of such training. More rigorous evaluation methods — including reliable measu…
Embedded in the critical realist tradition, this article aims to explore the potentialities of the case study for evaluation purposes when complexity and specificity are moderate.Three objectives are pursued. First, it is stated that the focus of the evaluation effort is not necessarily the programme itself, but can be one premise upon which the programme is built. Second, taking into account D…
This article provides some reflective thoughts on current research on regulatory impact assessment (RIA) in Europe.The narrative draws on the author's fieldwork diaries. It starts from the methodological problems of identifying and analysing regulatory impact assessment in the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden.This leads to more fundamental theoretical questions about research design, the…
The objective was to assess the impact of new guidance on the conduct of narrative synthesis in systematic reviews of effectiveness, by means of a blinded comparison of guidance-led narrative synthesis against a meta-analysis of the same study data.The conclusions of the two syntheses were broadly similar. However, differences between the approaches meant that conclusions about the impact of mo…
This article examines the relationship between the gross and net employment outcomes from the largest EU structural funding programme in the UK, the Objective 1 West Wales and the Valleys programme. The article demonstrates the practical difficulties of moving from gross to net outputs. It is suggested that these difficulties are not always explicitly considered in EU programme evaluations. One…
In Europe, the aim of achieving a knowledge-based society makes the quality of training systems a topic of crucial importance. Italy is also interested in working out strategies and tools for improving its training supply. To this end the Ministry of Labour asked a public research institute, the Institute for the Development of Workers' Vocational Training (ISFOL), to design a self-assessment t…
Despite the rich literature on networks, publications on the evaluation of networks are scarce. The aim of the article is to present the core concepts of network evaluation in the context of local and regional development, and a case study in Finnish North-Karelia. It is argued that network evaluation from the everyday life perspective (NEELP) is a special case. It requires an integrative desig…
Models that shift more responsibility onto researchers for the process of incorporating research results into decision-making have greatly gained in popularity during the past two decades. This shift has created a new area of research to identify the best ways to transfer academic results into the organizational and political arenas. However, evaluating the utilization of information coming out…
The evidence movement and the idea of systematic reviews, defined as summaries of the results of already existing evaluation and research projects, have gained considerable support in recent years as many international as well as national evidence-producing organizations have been established. This article analysis how the idea is practiced in the areas of health, social welfare and education a…