Trailing research based evaluation; phases and roles

The shortcomings of standardized and expert evaluations and the shortcomings of action research have reoriented many professional change agents to a new style of intervention, monitoring and evaluations. In this process, a concept of trailing research evaluations has been developed in order to utili...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evaluation and program planning 2004-11, Vol.27 (4), p.371-380
Main Authors: Olsen, Odd Einar, Lindøe, Preben
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action research
Legitimacy
Methodology
Pitfalls in evaluations
Roles
Trailing research
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Summary:The shortcomings of standardized and expert evaluations and the shortcomings of action research have reoriented many professional change agents to a new style of intervention, monitoring and evaluations. In this process, a concept of trailing research evaluations has been developed in order to utilise the strengths of both traditional and action research approaches in evaluations. That implies a double role for the evaluator and a need for a double mind when the evaluator at first contributes to the process of change and then is supposed to ‘prove’ the changes. A major problem in trailing research has been a lack of legitimacy due to the mix up of roles the evaluator needs to play during the evaluation. A framework is developed to identify key issues in the evaluation process. Based on experiences from four major evaluations, the roles of project owners, users and evaluators throughout the project implementation are discussed.
ISSN:0149-7189
DOI:10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2004.07.002