Abstract only

The rationale behind impact assessments is the commonsense notion that the evidence from these will be used to bring about improvements in the policies and programs evaluated and thereby contribute to economic and social betterment. As it becomes evident that impact assessment research is making less than the desired difference to the alleviation of human distress, evaluation researchers seek to understand why, and what can be done about it. This paper addresses the difference/lack of difference made to social betterment (e.g. food sustainability, poverty reduction, and the sustainable environmental management) by impact assessment and by evaluation research more broadly. First, the paper examines the principal reasons why evidence from evaluation research is not more immediately and effectively used; then it explores some of the ways that practitioners in the international evaluation community are working to design and conduct evaluations that promote relevance, credibility, and the practical use of findings. The paper reviews the international evaluation community's current thinking about impact evaluation and other evaluation research. It also draws on the authors' direct experience conducting and promoting the use of evaluation in research and development organizations over the past 25 years. Evaluation is a powerful, emerging "transdiscipline". It is also a highly sensitive field of practice in that it is virtually never undertaken in a politically or ideologically neutral environment and seldom within a policy vacuum. However, it has been long acknowledged that its principal weakness is the relatively mild influence that evaluation evidence exerts on individuals, organizations, and the broader communities charged with decision making. Many explanations have been put forward for this, in addition to the fact that evaluation evidence is only one source of information used to influence policy and operations, others being the values, beliefs, preferences, prejudices, and needs of the decision makers and their constituencies. It is acknowledged that some evaluations are biased towards the perspective of a single stakeholder group, some fail to establish an evaluation team with credibility in content or methodology, some unjustifiably assume that the evaluation approach adopted is acceptable to the principle decision-makers. To address the lack of influence of evaluations, the different philosophies, perspectives, values and practices that make up the evaluation discipline have been subjected to close scrutiny. The purpose of this scrutiny is a better understanding of the construct "evaluation use" and the identification of practices that promote utilization. The paper reviews this work and makes practical suggestions as to what evaluators can do in order to "make more of a difference" to the policies and programs they address.

English

0310|R01CIMPU|AGRIS 0301|AL-Economics Program

Juan Carlos Mendieta

CIMMYT Publications Collection