Meta-Evaluation

Good evaluation requires that evaluation efforts themselves be evaluated. Many things can and often do go wrong in evaluation work. Accordingly, it is necessary to check evaluations for problems such as bias, technical error, administrative difficulties, and misuse. Such checks are needed both to im...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of multidisciplinary evaluation 2011-02, Vol.7 (15), p.99-158
Main Author: Stufflebeam, Daniel L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Concept Formation
Definitions
Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Methods
Evaluation Problems
Evaluation Research
Experimenter Characteristics
Guidelines
Influences
Measurement Objectives
Meta Analysis
meta-evaluation
Occasional Paper Series
Performance Factors
Program Descriptions
Program Evaluation
Research Administration
Research Design
Research Methodology
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Summary:Good evaluation requires that evaluation efforts themselves be evaluated. Many things can and often do go wrong in evaluation work. Accordingly, it is necessary to check evaluations for problems such as bias, technical error, administrative difficulties, and misuse. Such checks are needed both to improve ongoing evaluation activities and to assess the merits of completed evaluation efforts. The aim of this paper is to present both a logical structure and methodological suggestions for evaluating evaluation. This paper is based on work performed in the Ohio State University Evaluation Center between 1963 and 1973. That work provided many occasions for addressing meta-evaluation issues, including developing evaluation systems and assessing the work of such systems, designing and conducting evaluation studies, training graduate students and practitioners to conduct evaluation work, and critiquing many evaluation designs and reports. These experiences and the attendant problems are the basis for this paper. Part I of this paper discusses the need to develop a technology for evaluating evaluation; describes eleven meta-evaluation criteria; and delineates six classes of problems that plague evaluation efforts. Part II presents a definition, eight premises, and a logical structure for meta-evaluation work. Part III describes how the structure might be used through describing and illustrating five meta-evaluation designs. (Contains 8 figures.)
ISSN:1556-8180
1556-8180
DOI:10.56645/jmde.v7i15.300