Yoland Wadsworth - Everyday Evaluation on the Run

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EVERYDAY EVALUATION
ON THE RUN

THIRD EDITION

EVERYDAY EVALUATION
ON THE RUN

THIRD EDITION

Yoland Wadsworth

This book is dedicated to the former Premier of Victoria and Ministers for Education, Community Services, and Healththe Honourable Joan Kirner, Kaye S etches, the late Pauline Toner and Caroline Hoggfor originally supporting this cross-portfolio work, and for believing in the importance of hearing the voice of those for whom social justice has not yet been achieved.

Originally published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in 2011 under ISBN 978-1-74237-043-9.

First published 2011 by Left Coast Press, Inc.

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright Yoland Wadsworth 2011.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-61132-104-3 paperback

Cartoons by Simon Kneebone.

Evaluation has become something of a popular incantation, regularly invoked to ensure that the bad spirits of inefficiency, ineffectiveness and inappropriateness do not characterise our human service efforts!

Yet, like research and science, it has become a technical specialty with its own language and high priests. This often makes it difficult for those who use or provide the services to feel confident evaluating their own services. We want this guide not only to make evaluation understandable, but also to give readers a sense of the satisfaction that can come from this kind of activity. There can be a real feeling of achievement and purpose from a self-directed learning effort that leads to services that are more spot-on and responsive to users.

Evaluation continues to be used as a reporting and accountability strategy by funders and other authorities. Yet their purpose of providing value for money is not served well if the evaluation either fails to get at the qualitative nature of peoples experience, or if it counts the wrong things, does so at the wrong times, or is done for the wrong reasons. This book attempts to outline ways of evaluating that provide meaningful and useful accounts of situations.

As with Do It Yourself Social Research (Wadsworth, 1st ed. 1984; 3rd ed. 2011), to which this book is a sequel, the assumption is that readers are best served not so much by a cookbook, but rather by describing some of the underlying concepts and principles. Given an understanding of why, we have found that people are able to apply the how in flexible ways to their own varied situations.

We would like to thank all those who have contributed to the various reference groups in which the ideas in this book were developed, debated and tested. We look forward to your feedback for our own further evaluation!

We would like to thank Yoland Wadsworth for her inspiration, rigour and untiring efforts to articulate new and better ways of grasping the business of evaluation and research. We know she considers this book to represent a work in progress. However we are aware that its ideas represent new ways of thinking about and dealing with problems that have already been seized on enthusiastically by those in the field. We hope that these ideas will be widely discussed over the coming years.

Finally, the vision and funding provided by the Victorian State Government Social Justice Strategy has allowed this project to be undertaken. The abiding achievement indicator for the long-term evaluation of the projects success will be whether people find (or are assisted to find) a voice with which they can speak more clearly and loudly about the conditions that are problematic to them, and about the human services that are intended to meet their needs. Under conditions of financial stringency, it is all the more critical to have evaluation approaches that enable us to focus clearly on the ultimate purpose of all our efforts.

Sue Kenny
Action Research Issues Association (Incorporated)

WARNING!!

THIS BOOK CONTAINS SOME UNFAMILIAR AND THEORETICAL IDEAS THAT MAY SOMETIMES SEEM LIKE HARD WORK. PERSEVERANCE WILL BE REWARDED! PLEASE READ THIS PAGE.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
This chapter explains why built-in naturalistic everyday evaluation is so valuable, and introduces the familiarity of its process. It sketches the ideas contained throughout the rest of the book by the example of an evaluation of a humble coffee mug.

CHAPTER 2: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
This chapter tracks around a cycle of the evaluation research processfrom observation, to designing further fieldwork, to reflections and conclusions, and assessment of future options for new practices, and finally to their planning and enactment. It includes a comprehensive discussion of who the evaluation is for, and also of the pros and cons of insider and outsider evaluation.

CHAPTER 3: TWO APPROACHES TO EVALUATION
This chapter commences by asking whether we need to do more evaluating or whether we already know enough to report to those who might have a need to know. When we need new evaluation, two different approaches to evaluation are then contrasted: an open inquiry approach that asks Is it working? and Why?, and an audit review approach that asks Did we do what we set out to do? This is a little heavy going, but attempts to dispel the myth that evaluation can only start from formal written objectives. Evaluation should also proceed from observing and reflecting on our large mental store of experiences, intentions and purposes.

CHAPTER 4: DOING EVALUATION
Phew! Now with all that theory behind us it is hoped that we can see how to actually build in evaluation as part of our everyday lives. This chapter proposes the idea of a culture of evaluation, ranging from the most micro and short-term to the more macro and long-termreflecting the different scale of our activities and alignment with our purposes, from over-arching philosophy right down to whether we should, for example, change the phone answering machine message this morningwhat we now call program logic.

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